Ieva Maslinskaitė is a Lithuanian interdisciplinary artist born in 1999 in Vilnius, Lithuania. She is currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and her artistic practice primarily revolves around photography, microbiology, and ecological inquiries. Her work challenges conventional perspectives on image-making and environmental representation by incorporating microorganisms, fungi, and bacteria into her creative processes.
Maslinskaitė's art destabilizes binary thinking about the environment by exploring interspecies relationships and ecological systems. She uses unconventional materials such as greenhouse glass, agar (plant-based gelatine), and cyanotype emulsions to cultivate microorganisms that interact with her artworks. This approach transforms her pieces into living ecosystems where bacteria and fungi grow, evolve, and decay, making the process itself integral to the artwork.
Her notable project Pupa exemplifies this ethos by allowing bacteria and fungi to colonize large-format film negatives depicting controlled Dutch landscapes. This process shifts photography from being a fixed representation to a dynamic site of ecological transformation.
Maslinskaitė earned her Photography degree from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Her studies sparked her interest in microbiology and ecological art. She has participated in several residencies, including a year-long HIDE OUT residency at De Besturing in The Hague and another at Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. These experiences have deepened her understanding of materials and ecological connections.
Her work frequently explores the ethical implications of ecological art, questioning human control over other organisms while advocating for collaborative creation with nature. She emphasizes the interconnectedness between humans and non-human organisms, noting that humans are composed of more non-human cells than human ones. This perspective informs her artistic philosophy of co-creation rather than exploitation.
Maslinskaitė plans to continue exploring microorganisms such as fungi, yeast, and bacteria in her future projects. She aims to highlight their resilience and their role in shaping ecosystems while fostering new ways to understand environmental processes through art
