Daria Mikhailova
(Me)tabolic Language

This installation consists of pieces of chiffon with the vague outlines of the five Chinese characters making up the proverb 实践出真知 (“True knowledge is born out of practice”). These outlines were not produced using a brush, but through bacterial growth on a photographic film that was then recorded through a microscope. The organic colours and the fuzzy outline result from a chemical reaction between bacterial metabolites and the photographic emulsion. Text turns from a system of signs on a surface to the aftermath of a biological process.

The exhibit explores language learning not only as an intellectual activity, but as a process of physical and emotional adaptation. The project draws from the experience of a long period of living and studying in China and invites us to examine a state where a new language environment reshapes both our thinking and our everyday bodily experiences. Language is seen as an environment that gradually alters our perception, behaviour, and emotional reactions.

The heart of the project is the study of language acquisition as a sequence of repeated physical and sensory interactions. Leveraging the microbiota–gut–brain axis concept, adaptation is seen as an interconnected process of cognitive and biological change: new sounds, articulatory challenges, tastes and social practices are integrated into our physiological experiences of stress, memory, attention, and bodily adaptation. The installation is complemented with videos documenting performative acts of food consumption marked with the inscribed characters, as well as the process of creating the work, making the literal metaphor of language acquisition (or internalization) visible and material.