In a time marked by ecological crisis it becomes necessary to establish a critical perspective on the dominant industrial model of material trade and propose alternatives to how we relate to materiality. Rather than simply replacing one set of materials with another, the challenge lies in engendering a processual rethinking of the techniques, values, and epistemologies that underpin material practices. This open dialogue invites us to ask: how can we imagine alternatives to our pervasive dependency on petrochemical-based substances within an ecosystem shaped by extractive economies and technological determinism?
To help us explore how the question of materiality might be reformulated from within the field of artistic research and production, I spoke with María José Besoain and Alejandro Weiss Münchmayer, co-founders of the Laboratorio de Biomateriales de Valdivia (LABVA) and initiators of the BIOPOLIMÉRICA platform. LABVA, founded in 2017, is an independent, self-managed laboratory based in southern Chile and a key actor in South America’s biomaterial movement. BIOPOLIMÉRICA is a LABVA-initiated platform on biodesign and biomaterials that brings together artists, students, and researchers through workshops, exhibitions, and public debates; first convened in Guadalajara, Mexico (2022) and later in Valdivia, Chile (2023) and Medellín, Colombia (2025) to cultivate a collectively forged, context-aware material culture and to assert cultural, environmental, and political agency in relation to materiality reflection; acting as a meeting point for South American initiatives.
In our conversation Besoain and Weiss position material experimentation as both a site of critical inquiry and situated care. What emerges is less a catalog of biomaterials than a vision of materiality as relational, ecological, and culturally embedded practice, grounded in notions of both ecosystemic and anthropic abundance. Instead of seeking universalized solutions, LABVA proposes localized, context-sensitive strategies—rooted in residues, temporalities, and cultural memories—that resist extractivist homogenization and instead cultivate an ecology of knowledge built on plurality, interdependence, and autonomy.
In this framework, the practices developed through LABVA and the BIOPOLIMÉRICA platform contribute to an international field of material research characterised by collaboration and knowledge exchange between different research environments. Such exchanges support the development of material practices that are responsive to local conditions while operating within a broader transnational context.
In the Finnish context, several academic and independent research programmes are currently engaged in the study of bio-based materials, although challenges related to accessibility and practical implementation remain for artists and creative practitioners.
Some of the most notable initiatives from academia include ChemArts at Aalto University, the BioARTech Laboratory in Lapland, and the new postdoctoral project on materials research at the Academy of Fine Arts at Uniarts Helsinki. There are also independent associations and collectives, such as our own association Arcaica and the Koyne Program, through which we foster interdisciplinary exchange and experimentation focused on more sustainable thinking, materials research and intercultural collaboration with the likes of Caracara Collective, an experimental design studio focused on biomaterials and biowaste. In addition, there are collaborative projects like Learning Materials, a multi-year project committed to rethinking and remaking our relationship with materials, organized by Bioart Society, HIAP, Koyne Program, SWAMP: Art Material and Waste Management Point and TUO TUO.
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Signori: How can the exploration of biomaterials from the Global South contribute to rethinking our ways of inhabiting the world in the context of ecological and material crisis?
Besoain & Weiss: Biomaterial practice in the Global South opens the possibility of reconfiguring our relationships with the environments we inhabit, proposing modes of creation rooted in autonomy, affectivity, and situated knowledge. Rather than replicating extractive and colonizing models imposed by the Global North, these practices are embedded in the cultural, ecological, and technological diversities of each territory, recognizing abundance beyond industrial standards.
Working with appropriate scales and technologies—often linked to traditional knowledge or collaborative practices—diverse material cultures emerge that not only address ecological urgency but also question dominant logics of creation, production, and even consumption. Biodesign from the South thus becomes more than a technical alternative; it is also an act of resistance, reclamation, care, and regeneration, capable of imagining and constructing more just, sensitive, and sustainable ways of inhabiting.
Signori: What has BIOPOLIMÉRICA meant as an event and platform in the Latin American context, and how has it evolved since its creation by LABVA?
Besoain & Weiss: BIOPOLIMÉRICA has become one of the most significant platforms dedicated to biodesign and biomaterials in Latin America. More than an event, it is a living platform for encounter, reflection, and creation that seeks to trace common routes to make visible, connect, and strengthen emerging practices around living, regenerative materialities deeply rooted in their territories.
From the outset, BIOPOLIMÉRICA proposed an honest, affective, and situated approach, born from the diverse realities of this bioregion. Far from replicating hegemonic discourses on material culture, the encounter has been nourished by small local experiences that, when interwoven, have shaped a deeply critical collective movement. This movement challenges the centrality of technical and productivist knowledge and resists closed, finalized understandings, proposing instead an ecology of knowledges, practices, and narratives proper to our transition and reclamation.
The first steps that gave life to the encounter emerged spontaneously in Valdivia, in southern Chile—a peripheral territory outside major national and international circuits of creation and innovation. It arose from the need to question and share our own practices, with their values and challenges—such as limited access to Spanish-language bibliography, scarce research resources, and the low visibility of initiatives from decentralized regions—leading to connections with other experiences in the region.
This gave rise to the first gathering in Guadalajara (Mexico), later replicated in Valdivia (Chile) and Medellín (Colombia), bringing together more than 150 material projects from different Latin American countries, working with diverse sources of abundance. Across its three editions, the event has hosted exhibitions, talks, discussions, and workshops with the participation of over 3,000 visitors.
Over time, BIOPOLIMÉRICA has evolved into a cultural, environmental, and political agency platform. Here, biomaterials are not understood solely as a technical field, but as a means of resistance, imagination, and reconfiguration of our ways of inhabiting. Deliberately distanced from capital cities—which tend to concentrate knowledge and capital—its gatherings activate networks of affection, collaboration, and exchange among those who think and create from other scales, times, and memories.
Today, BIOPOLIMÉRICA is also an invitation to rethink our relationships with matter, territory, and “time”—a commitment to a fairer, more creative, and regenerative material practice, attuned to the plurality of voices inhabiting Latin America.
Signori: What types of projects and materials have been presented at BIOPOLIMÉRICA, and what do they reveal about the connections between ecology, culture, and material experimentation?
Besoain & Weiss: Across its editions, BIOPOLIMÉRICA has convened a wide variety of projects from across Latin America, revealing a broad spectrum of practices linked to biodesign and biomaterials. Rather than offering a homogeneous vision, the platform has resonated with proposals ranging from craft and design to artistic experimentation and applied research, highlighting how matter can be approached from situated, ecological, and culturally committed perspectives.
From the first edition in Guadalajara (Mexico), BIOPOLIMÉRICA set itself as a space for collective exploration, mapping, and understanding biomaterial practices from the Global South. This effort has integrated methodologies and ways of making anchored in territories, recognizing the multiple scales, temporalities, and memories shaping living materialities. The platform has thus served not only as a showcase of projects but also as a critical and pedagogical device that challenges dominant logics of material development.
The projects presented reveal how the links between ecology, culture, and material creation manifest through the recognition of two kinds of abundance that serve as starting points for situated biomaterial experimentation: ecosystemic abundance and anthropic abundance.
Ecosystemic abundance refers to biological resources and natural cycles that can be used in regenerative ways and with respect for ecological balance. This perspective entails an attentive reading of the territory—its seasonality, rhythms, and capacities—in order to generate materialities that do not exhaust the living systems from which they arise. Here, the creative gesture is interwoven with an ethics of care, in which biological temporality and regenerative cycles are constitutive parts of design and fabrication processes. Notable examples include projects that emerge from interspecies co-creation, such as mycelium-based materials, or from symbiotic fermentation.
Anthropic abundance, also called apparent abundance, refers to by-products of the economic-industrial model—including local and household scales—such as organic waste or discarded materials that can be re-signified as potential resources for new material practices. This form of abundance raises questions about the limits of sustainability and about the role of design in reconfiguring waste flows, creating possibilities for transformation and reinsertion into local contexts—even when these residues are not originally from the territory in which they are reused.
Both forms of abundance have been fundamental to the development of more than 150 projects exhibited across the three editions of BIOPOLIMÉRICA, evidencing not only technical or scientific capacity but also a profound cultural and political dimension. These projects show that biomaterials, beyond their functional potential, can enable other ways of imagining matter, relating to territory, and projecting livable futures through situated, interspecies, and regenerative practice.
In this sense, BIOPOLIMÉRICA has actively contributed to building an ecology of knowledges around biomaterials, in which material practice interweaves with affective narratives, territorial memories, and a critical sensitivity to the socio-ecological crisis. The platform not only makes visible the challenges faced by the Global South but also proposes a form of resistance and agency through practices of making and creation. Ultimately, the projects presented at BIOPOLIMÉRICA embody a commitment to material practices that, through situated experimentation, seek to reconfigure and advance a transition in our ways of inhabiting and relating to the world.
Signori: Could you mention some projects from the three editions of BIOPOLIMÉRICA?
Besoain & Weiss: Firstly, there’s the Biology Studio – a key reference in Mexico’s biomaterials community. It is led by artist and researcher Edith Medina, a pioneer of bioart and biodesign in Latin America. With more than two decades of work, her practice is grounded in biological processes that weave together ancestral knowledge, local science, political ecology, and material creation. Working from I.T.T. philosophy (Innovation + Technology + Tradition), Biology Studio has developed projects spanning art, design, fashion, and science, promoting a situated material culture. It participated in the exhibition of Latin American projects in BIOPOLIMÉRICA’s second edition (Valdivia, 2023) and was a featured speaker in the third edition (Medellín, 2024).
Another noteworthy project is SEED, also from Mexico and conducted by architects Karina Schwartzman (Tecorral Estudio) and Karen Poulain (Raíz Arquitectura). At the intersection of architecture, ancestral materials, and innovation, SEED proposes new ways of inhabiting through earth. Schwartzman and Poulain combine biomimicry, regenerative design, and traditional construction techniques to develop large-scale 3D printing systems using earth and natural fibers. Their proposal investigates how dialogue between technology and ancestral knowledge can generate regenerative architectures that are environmentally sensitive and culturally rooted.
From art and research, Costa Rica -based sculptor and academic Jonathan Torres explores the blurred edges between the organic and the synthetic. His project Máquinas Salvajes proposes a series of biodegradable technological devices—based on artisanal, starch-derived biopolymers—that fuse art, robotics, and speculative materiality. Conceived from a poetic rather than engineering perspective, these machines address the death of the machine as a metaphor for eco-social transformation, suggesting possible futures in which technology reintegrates into natural cycles. The project pushes the boundaries of traditional robotics, proposing living materials and environmentally respectful technologies.
From Ecuador, the DLAB laboratory, directed by designer Cristina Muñoz, has advanced an applied line of work in rural territories focused on design with waste and the promotion of the bioeconomy. In BIOPOLIMÉRICA’s third edition, they presented the design and prototyping of a machine to produce biofilm from cassava starch by-products, implemented with the Indigenous community of Taramak (Macas, Ecuador). The goal was to develop a decentralized production model capable of transforming organic waste into biodegradable packaging with agronomic and everyday applications, thus fostering material autonomy and local sustainability.
And as a final example, the hosting organization LABVA has developed two fundamental lines of research and biomaterial creation. The first of these concerns fermented biotextiles. Using bacterial cellulose generated in symbiotic processes with yeast, LABVA has created a leather-like material with high mechanical strength, flexibility, vegan and compostable properties, and low environmental impact. Its development is directly linked to the use of residues from the fermented beverage industry, integrating circular-economy principles into biomaterial generation. The second undertaking relates to calcium-carbonate bioceramics: using shells of Mytilus chilensis from Chile’s southern coast, LABVA has initiated a morphological exploration to generate unique pieces from high-calcium residues, opening a new field in the design of marine-origin biomaterials.
All in all, BIOPOLIMÉRICA consolidates itself as a platform that makes visible projects committed to material transformation from the local level, cross-disciplinary exchange and critical creation. Through these initiatives, it imagines a future in which technologies, cultures, and territories connect to generate regenerative and affective material cultures.
Signori: How can a dialogue on materialities between the South and the North contribute to building material and cultural justice from an open, situated, and regenerative perspective? And what possibilities does collaboration between BIOPOLIMÉRICA and Arcaica open for imagining new models of exchange between Latin America and the Nordic countries?
Besoain & Weiss: We believe there is transformative power in opening dialogue and new perspectives on practices of thinking and making, redefining established hierarchies shaped by homogenizing global views.
Material and cultural justice will only be achieved by embracing uncomfortable conversations and deeply critical practices, breaking with the pressures of immediacy, homogenization, and standardization. It requires exposing what, within our own practices, renders invisible or reinforces extractivist models—whether of resources or culture. This means overcoming binary hierarchies of North and South to recognize practices that acknowledge their own forms of abundance—natural, cultural, or symbolic—and understand them as regenerative or as perpetuating a status quo. We urgently need to be aware of who we are and what we can truly do from within each of our territories.
In this sense, collaboration between platforms such as BIOPOLIMÉRICA and Arcaica opens real possibilities for imagining and rethinking models of exchange between Latin America and the Nordic countries. This alliance not only fosters encounters between different approaches, methodologies, and materials, but also invites us to rethink the flows of knowledge and experience from a more horizontal logic, where Southern experiences are not seen as subsidiary but as catalysts for new questions, languages, narratives, and practices.
Achieving this dialogue will help create material narratives that acknowledge the interdependence of culture and ecology, and foster a critical practice of design and material creation. Ultimately, it is about weaving networks that allow us to imagine a transition toward more just, sensitive, and sustainable futures, from the materialities we inhabit and that inhabit us.
Signori: What formats (residencies, laboratories, exhibitions, educational programs) can facilitate dialogue among materialities, ecologies and possible futures?
Besoain & Weiss: We believe that fostering such dialogue requires formats that support not only the transmission of knowledge but also situated experimentation and the collective construction of knowledges.
In this regard, our experience shows that artist residencies and experimental laboratories are key spaces for practice-based research, as they allow practitioners to test approaches in direct relation to territories, their forms of abundance, and their communities. These formats enable embodied and situated learning, in which materials are understood not merely as resources but as relational agents mediating how we make sense of our surroundings.
Likewise, it is valuable to create discussion spaces that overflow disciplinary silos of making—through roundtables, public talks, and/or collective exhibitions open to broader audiences. Such settings foster generative intersections among researchers, designers, artisans, activists, students, and local communities.
Finally, educational programs make it possible to rethink and stress-test the methodologies of material practice, broadening the technical lens to include social, political, and ecological dimensions—so that we can imagine possible futures in an integrated way through collaboration. These are unique opportunities to form practitioners not only as designers or researchers of the material world, but above all as mediators of new cultural and territorial logics and practices.
Text/interview: Renzo Signori
Photos: LABVA / Laboratorio de Biomateriales de Valdivia
The writer works as the curator of the Koynē Program at Arcaica, which is a Helsinki-based nonprofit association founded in 2021 that supports artistic and curatorial practices at the intersection of art, environment and technology.
The publication of this text has been supported by Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse.