Petra Maitz

Petra Maitz (1962) studied medicine and biochemistry in the 1980s in Vienna before becoming an artist. In 2013, she did a PhD in interdisciplinary studies of natural environments and the philosophy of theoretical biology at the Center for Art and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Her book Visualization of Evolution (2014) became an atlas for understanding epigenetics and the RNA-world, a drawing compendium of 180 science pictions and a broad thesis about the connection between art and nature. In 2018, she was at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Centre de recherche et de cooperation scientifique (Paris), working with sociologists and scientists on bioeconomies.

Lady Musgrave Reef, a crocheted reef, was begun in 2001 as part of the launch of the Lady Musgrave Reef Foundation in Vienna. It was first shown in 2007 in the Graz Neue Galerie of the Museum Joanneum. The Reef was exhibited worldwide between 2010 to 2015 in Hamburg, Addis Ababa, São Paulo, Essen, Peru and Beijing.

It has been shown in a number of exhibitions in 2021, including Critical Zones 2020-21 at the ZKM, Center for Media Arts Karlsruhe, in Slow Life. Radical Practices of the Everyday at the Ludwigmuseum Koblenz and Budapest in 2019-2020 and in several art and academic events.

Participates in the exhibition "Science Friction" with the installation Lady Musgrave Reef, 2001-2021; and Gesundes Riffwachstum and The Dinoflagellate Community-metabolism, both pictures of the series Science Piction, 2005.