Kuang-Yi Ku (1985) is a former dentist, bio-artist, and speculative designer living between Taiwan and the Netherlands. He is an assistant professor at the Institute of Applied Arts in NYCU, Taiwan, and is doing his PhD research at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
In 2012, he also co-founded TW BioArt (Taiwan bio art community) to stimulate the fields of BioArt and Science+Art in Taiwan. His works often deal with the human body, sexuality, interspecies interaction, and medical technology, aiming to investigate the relationships among technology, individuals, and the environment.
Kuang-Yi Ku won the Bio Art & Design Award in 2022 for the project “Atlas of Queer Anatomy.” His “Tiger Penis Project” has been awarded Gijs Bakker Award 2018, the annual prize for the best project by a graduating master’s student in Design Academy Eindhoven. He also won the 1st prize in the Taipei Digital Art Awards in 2015 with “The Fellatio Modification Project”, where he involves body modification, gender studies, queer theories, and dentistry all together.
His works were featured in international media such as New Scientist, The Huffington Post, Elephant Magazine, DAMN° Magazine, Dezeen, Designboom, VICE, Dazed Digital, Daily Mail, and New York Post. Selected recent shows include: “Living Looonger”, De Studio NEMO Science Museum, Amsterdam (2024), “Dutch Design Awards” at Dutch Design Week, Miceolab Hall, Eindhoven (2023), “Love, Designed,” Design Museum Den Bosch (2023), “Co-becoming (s),” Museum of National Taipei University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan(2023), “The Planetarian,” Beijing Design Festival, (2022), “WeWe Futures: 2040 Plurality”, Taiwan Design Museum, Taipei (2022), and “Taoyuan Art x Technology Festival (TAxT),” Taoyuan Arts Center, Taoyuan (2022).
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: What led to your transition from dentistry to contemporary art and design?
KUANG – YI KU: I love Science – specifically Medicine (laugh). Since childhood, I have been drawn to creative practices, but sadly, Taiwan’s educational system is structured so that one needs to choose a clear direction very early on – in high school. I chose dentistry because I was interested in the dental material pathway; for example, what material can we use for prostheses? I practiced dentistry for a couple of years but found the profession quite limited – only available to a traditional scientific community. I have always wanted to research specific topics outside the profession – such as the in-between of gender issues and sexual functionality of the mouth or how to use Medicine to enhance the function of our body, so I turned to design school (laugh) and bio and speculative design. I am interested in how Medicine can affect present and future societies – through specific and sometimes controversial ethical and cultural problems.
LŠ: Could we look at when and why you established TW BioArt (Taiwan bio art community) to stimulate the fields of BioArt and Science+Art in Taiwan? Perhaps we could also revisit the scene before the development of TW BioArt?
KYK: In 2011, I changed my career path to art and design. I was eager to learn more about Bio Art; however, at that moment, it was tough to see any concrete examples in Taiwan, and there were also no teachings on an academic level. So, with my friend and later with a group of people interested in the collaboration between Bio Art and Art + Science, we founded a community to address this void. We would host book clubs and exhibitions in different spaces, such as my friend’s home in Taipei.
Over five to six years, the community grew relatively more robust. Also, the original community members (like me) started to participate in international exhibitions, and through that exposure, artists in Japan and Indonesia contacted us. So, our community grew beyond the borders of Taiwan.
In 2016, I relocated to the Netherlands, and some collective members joined different universities across Taiwan. Paul Gong was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Shih Chien University in 2020. Tsun-Hui Tsao joined as Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of Art and Technology (National Tsing Hua University). And I was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Applied Art, National Yang-Ming Chiao Tung University, in 2023. There was the potential to engage different practices with academia. It is funny because we started the group as a criticism of the educational system and then managed to change it (laugh).
LŠ: You also integrate a lot of dental material into your practice. How has it opened up your practice?
KYK: In many ways! I had a project called The Fellatio/Cunnilingus/Anilingus Modification Project, which is about using dentistry to challenge the system and to speculate the future where the gay community can transform their mouth to increase sexual pleasure. The work addresses an extreme and radical imagination – of queer speculative scenarios.
Another project funded by the European Commission is called the Center for Plant Immigrant Integration, where artists were matched with scientists (such as Prof. Sofie Goormachtig), and I worked with researchers in microbiology. The project focused on soybeans and how they could be grown locally in northern Belgium as future sustainable protein sources. However, soybeans come from Asia, requiring specific soil microbes to interact with them to capture the nitrogen from the soil and grow. Further to conditions such as sun exposure for growth, we looked at the documentation required to import the plant, and we cross-connected it to my own experience of being Asian in Europe and applying for a visa. Ultimately, the process examined how a soybean would require a passport (laugh).
Another project, Calico Human, in partnership with a skin cancer specialist, Prof.Chris Marine, looked at how skin cells produce specific melanin to create a color pattern. In the future, a fashion trend could be having a tattoo to create different skin versions for protection against sun exposure and, thus, cancer. However, Calico Human can also open the debate on complicated racism situations globally.
LŠ: Your work addresses protecting nature and traditional cultures in the medical field by introducing artificial wildlife, specifically in Traditional Chinese Medicine – to open up new collective healing practices. How exactly can design as a tool address this change?
KYK: Many of my priorities originate from the inspiration of Medicine and the controversy behind this field. I was trained in the Western medicine system, but of course, in Taiwan, there is a powerful and mature educational system in TCM – Traditional Chinese Medicine. But that’s not my belief, and TCM did not completely convince me because of my academic training. However, after relocating to Europe, I found a cultural value behind it, especially after a couple of projects I worked on, where I challenged modern Medicine through creative practice. In the Western medical system, there’s a weak point – a limitation of not being capable of researching alternative medical systems, that I wanted to address.
I interviewed a few practicing TCM doctors (trained in both Western and TCM approaches), and during these very inspiring talks, I realised that these two fields are not against each other. One needs both to work together. However, I discovered there is conflict in TCM practices despite the beneficial health properties of using animal parts of endangered species. It’s problematic due to the importance of environmental conservation and animal welfare.
I was intrigued by how design can help solve these complex animal welfare issues. There were cases of people using artificial rhino horns. However, the majority still prefer the real ones for health properties. So, to use biotechnology to incentivize a change in healing practices, one should propose a visual material, such as a prototype. And one of my projects is called Tiger Penis, which looked at suggesting alternatives to the original that is used to enhance virility.
LŠ: In TCM, Ginseng is essential for treating various illnesses and conditions. It would be great to hear more about your project, the Millennium Ginseng Project, which was presented in three parts and examined different properties and situations for cultivating this unique herb.
KYK: Ginseng is an important herb and an anti-aging medicine. And different from the Tiger Penis project, which used the 3D printing of tissue culture – the Ginseng project showed every endangered species is facing a different problem. Thus, a different solution in design and art will be required. Ginsengs are genetically endangered because they are bred from the same gene pool, and there is not much genetic diversity, making it very easy for them to be threatened with extinction if they face a virus or bacteria. Wild ginseng is more beneficial for consumption than the one produced on big farms, as it still has more gene diversity and roots.
For a while, people have illegally harvested ginseng from the mountains in Asia, which is problematic because it takes about seven years to grow fully. In the first chapter, Extreme Greenhouse, I wanted to explore how to translate the mountain/ that harsher natural environment to the farm setting—to create an agricultural way to grow them.
The second part of the project, Moon Ginseng, was developed by watching the news from China, where they sent a spaceship to the Moon to grow plants there. So, I started exploring ways of sending ginseng to outer space, the Moon, and creating an appropriate environment for it to grow. The last chapter of the project, Time Machine Farm, looked at ginseng cultivation through time—traveling in a spaceship.
LŠ: Another project, New Ultimate Imperial Feast, was a collaboration with Adelaide Lala Tam. It aimed to re-evaluate Chinese cuisine heritage and protect endangered species by redesigning traditional dishes using synthetic biology, tissue culture, and 3D bioprinting. The artificially created food opens a question of how humans and nature can co-exist and reflect upon the larger food culture and production.
KYK: With Rotterdam and Hong Kong- based Adelaide, we started collaborations during the TCM project and looked at different food traditions. There are stereotypes about the Chinese-speaking community of eating monkey meat, sharks, or bears. We wanted to look at how we could translate these species into a contemporary design version that would do no harm to animals and expand my method to a broader range of dishes and cuisines for different cultures. So, we started looking at creating imaginary dishes for the future and worked closely with audiences here, such as via a workshop, part of the 2019 Microwave International New Media Arts Festival in Hong Kong. The public participated in creating new dishes with specific foods that might be a subject of controversy via new techniques, layers, and experiences. The whole process of creating new dishes became a collection of new ideas and was, in essence, a collaborative approach to art. New Ultimate Imperial Feast will also tie up with the upcoming performing arts project in June in London.
After COVID-19, and even before, a good part of my projects looked at different food practices. For example, I’m working with an English designer, Robert Johnson, and we are collaborating internationally between the Taipei Performing Arts Centre and LIFT, London International Festival of Theatre, to explore the controversial topic of eating pets. The upcoming performance we are hosting in June is called a Bat Night Market, where we aim to create a market at the Science Gallery London with vendors selling bat-related food and games in East and South East Asia and Pacific Islands. It almost references Jurassic Park, where they also serve dinosaur meat, and one can eat a bit of extinct species. The idea is to bring everyone into the future to reflect upon old traditions in Southeast Asia. How can we eat a particular species in the future -without causing an extinction? Here, I am drawn to the performative element instead of a regular exhibition format due to a more extensive engagement with the audience.
