Author’s interpretation: Microscopic abstraction of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet “Swan Lake”. The black swan is represented by the infected cell (green) that jumps into the scene surrounded by the other dancers.

Author’s interpretation: When I visit spaces from my childhood that I haven’t seen in years, sadly it happens that the world that seemed so vast to me as a child has become much smaller when seen through the skewed perspective of the adult…

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of the famous woodblock print from the 19th century “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai. The piece also represents the rise in the levels of the sea due to the climate change that is directly affecting many islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Author’s interpretation: These cell lineages normally coexist and collaborate in the walls of blood vessels; however, when extracted from the tissue and placed in a culture dish in vitro, they begin to compete for growth space. Are our behaviors as human beings a reflection of something rooted at the cellular level? This work is a microscopic allegory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic abstraction of a male seahorse that represents all the marine wildlife in danger by the warming of the oceans due to climate change.

Author’s interpretation: Coral reefs are important ecosystems that enable life underwater and provide a crucial source of food and jobs for millions of people. They also protect coastlines from storms and erosion by reducing the power of waves hitting the coast. Climate change is dramatically affecting coral reefs all over the world. Its conservation and restoration must be one of the primary goals for present and future generations.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of the environmental problem we are facing in the present. Our world is represented in a single well with cells that suffer the drastic changes in the culture conditions occasioned by a viral infection (green), that spreads over this microscopic landscape like twisters and hurricanes do in the affected areas of our planet.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic abstraction of radiotropic fungi isolated from the area with radioactive contamination around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It is simply incredible how our mistakes foster the evolution of other species that, by mere serendipity, help us with bioremediation alternatives.

Author’s interpretation: The current ‘consumer society’ always has something new to show and easily makes us forget the past. In the world of the ‘attention economy,’ it seems we live in a ‘perpetual present,’ where we have neither the time nor space to digest all the data the screen throws at us. In this scenario, the shapes of the cells in the artwork represent the fleeting nature of current ideas, resembling the volatility of a dissipating gas.

Author’s interpretation: A microscopic allegory of the drip technique, a splashing liquid paint method used by American artist Jackson Pollock, a key figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the second half of the 20th century. Cell textures from different microscopic fields were overlaid on a digital canvas.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of comet 1P/Halley. Edmond Halley (1656-1742) stole a victory from superstition and contributed new knowledge to science by mathematically predicting the period of his eponymous comet.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of the University of Costa Rica. State institutions of higher education in Costa Rica not only contribute to the country’s development through the training of highly skilled professionals. Public universities also serve as centers for knowledge generation and patronage for thinkers, scientists, and artists who, through their work, create portals to new horizons and realities.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic abstraction of the spectrum of identities and personalities of biological entities. We are not static organisms, but rather homeostatic ones in constant evolution.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of the ‘Pink poui’ (Tabebuia rosea), which blooms during the summer in our country and beautifies rural and urban landscapes with its hues.

Author’s interpretation: Homage to African culture and to Afro-descendant people, the mother of humanity. Inadvertently spread throughout the world and in constant struggle against the systematic discrimination that has existed for centuries. The artwork was revealed to the author during a time of constant tension and protest by human rights movements.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of our modern meetings. Neurons from different microscopic fields were placed together by digital means in a virtually created microscopic space.

Author’s interpretation: This work highlights how the mere act of receiving a vaccine does not guarantee protection from an immunological standpoint, as many patients fail to produce high levels of neutralizing antibodies, as demonstrated by the neutralization assay presented. In these cases, vaccination becomes a kind of conceptual placebo with more political and economic purposes than public health benefits.

Author’s interpretation: From my point of view, the cells of a deceased individual that continue to divide under laboratory conditions are a kind of ‘cellular zombies.’ Biochemical machines with replicative capacity, wandering through space-time and subsisting because it is biologically and thermodynamically plausible, but from the perspective of the original multicellular entity, they have lost their purpose…

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of the political instability experienced in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ukraine in 2022. The artwork symbolizes the struggle of three peoples ‘moving forward’ in pursuit of their freedom. The human carcinoma cells stained in blue represent the oppressive political systems. The innocent populations suffering at the mercy of the dictators are symbolized by the human embryonic kidney cells in yellow. The dead cells in red allude to the martyrs of such injustices.

Author’s interpretation: This work establishes an analogy between the political framework currently governing the Republic of Nicaragua and a lethal viral infection for a cellular system. The map of this country is microscopically represented through a photomicrograph of a group of human cells infected with the Dengue Virus and stained using the immunofluorescence technique. Its name derives from the eponymous poem by Nicaraguan author Rubén Darío, in which the uncertainty of life is described from the perspective of the conscious being. Another analogy is made here with the Nicaraguan youth, who consciously grow up in a repressive system where those in power turn mere subjectivities into absolute and irrefutable truths.