Practitioner
Slimy Futures
Submitted as Catherine Euale
Halifax, NS / Mi'kma'ki
“What if the walls of our homes did more than shelter us? What if, through their animate past, they also evoked a sense of connection with the living world.”
Catherine Euale (Slimy Futures) is a bio-artist, material researcher and science communicator based in the east coast of Turtle Island. Her practice explores marine algae as a source of biocompatible, water-responsive materials, from sodium alginate films and bioyarn to solid kelp-gellant vessels and laser-cut composite sheets. Rooted in more-than-human design and a decade of biofabrication work, her work emerges at the intersection of art, ecology and speculative design. As a materials based practitioner, her projects are less objects and more living archives of what algae can become and how we can relate to our built environment as part of a larger living ecosystem. She teaches bioplastics workshops, mentors emerging biodesigners, and creates innovative materials like self-powering algae-based electronics. She facilitates exhibitions and workshops as a way of inviting people to touch, question and imagine new relationships with our underwater kin.
Materials and process
Catherine works from a material-based design practice, where the inherent properties of algae-derived materials guide the final outcome rather than a predetermined form, with biocompatibility with living systems as a constant throughline. Working primarily with sodium and calcium alginate, she produces flexible films, bioyarn and rigid composites through crosslinking reactions with calcium chloride and other mineral solutions, alongside kelp-gellant solids cast into various functional forms. This research has extended into aerospace applications through a microalgae grow bag developed with Jennifer Gil-Acevedo for NASA MINDS, self-powering bioelectronics generated from atmospheric humidity through the Electric Skin project, and symbiotic, biodegradable garments through Future Wardrobe Project.