Micro Macro Photo Litho initiated a new collaboration between artist printmaker Erika Servin and biomedical engineer Dr Enrique Escobedo-Cousin. It aimed to use experimentation with scale to provide insights into how photolithographic print processes are used in:

•   fine art printmaking and in 

•  ‘semiconductor micro-fabrication’. 

 

Working in collaboration in the Fine Art studios and lab spaces in Biomedical Science at Newcastle University, two series of prints were produced: 

1. 'Macro' prints  are a series of prints  depicting medical electrodes designed by Enrique Escobedo=Cousin, fabricated at Newcastle University as a part of a project aiming to study the human skeletal muscle (www.microemg.com). These prints were produced by Servin, using fine art lithographic print processes. 

2. ‘Micro’ prints made by Enrique Escobedo-Cousin with the same photo lithography process but on a microscopic scale using semiconductor fabrication techniques, depicts Erika’s interest in Popular Mexican culture, focusing on Contemporary Mexican subcultures with the aim of using the micro scale to view these portraits through the microscope and study them with attention.

 

Pulque 

It is a project that investigates an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant. It is traditional to central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. I am interested in the revival of this drink and its relation to the community and social traditions as well as the visual symbols that are contained in old and new culture. The mix of pre-Columbian and contemporary identity and the interest of the visual significance and historical importance are the centre of my research interests. 

The project compromises:

·       a series of prints taken from a photographic and video source of the “pulquerias”

·       an intervention of those public space (Pulqueria Insurgentes) 

·       interaction of artists, art students and the consumers of the drink.

 

 

Current Research

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MUXE now!: interrogating the visual cultures of a third gender community.

 

Research Aims: MUXE NOW is a fine art practice-based research project

that explores the distinctive visual identity of the ‘Muxe’ and its relation to contemporary globalised culture. The project will provide new perspectives on gender identities and visual and media culture and race in Mexico. The research context for the project starts locally in Juchitan, in the Mexican

state of Oaxaca, but makes connections between local and global concerns in relation to gender/visual identities, race and specifically to the idea of a ‘third gender’.