Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet “Swan Lake”. The Black Swan is embodied by the infected cell (green), which emerges onto the stage surrounded by the other dancers.

Author’s interpretation: When I return to the places of my childhood after many years, I find that the world that once felt vast and magical has, through the altered perspective of adulthood, become unexpectedly small and real.

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 within the walls of blood vessels. However, when removed from their native tissue and placed together in a culture dish in vitro, they begin to compete for space and resources. Are our behaviors as human beings a reflection of processes rooted at the cellular level? This work is a microscopic abstraction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory 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 allegory of the radiotropic fungi discovered in the radioactive exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The work reflects on the paradoxical creativity of life: how human errors can open new evolutionary pathways for other species, and how organisms that emerge from our catastrophes may ultimately help bioremediate what we have damaged.

Author’s interpretation: Contemporary consumer society always has something new to display, encouraging us to forget what has just passed. In the world of the attention economy, we seem to inhabit a perpetual present, unable to fully absorb the incessant stream of information flowing across our screens. In this context, the cellular forms within the artwork evoke the transitory nature of contemporary ideas, whose existence appears to fade with the same speed and volatility as a dispersing gas.

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic abstraction 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 Costa Rica 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 perspective, the cells of a deceased individual that continue to divide under laboratory conditions offer biological evidence of their autonomy as living entities. I often wonder whether our cells have any notion that they belong to us. Perhaps they do not. Perhaps, in the same way, we remain unaware that we ourselves belong to something greater within a vast fractal continuum, in which every level of existence is both an individual and a part of a larger whole…

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 freedom. The human carcinoma cells, stained blue, represent oppressive political systems. The innocent populations suffering under these regimes are symbolized by the human embryonic kidney cells in yellow. The dead cells, stained red, allude to the martyrs of these injustices.

Author’s interpretation: This work establishes an analogy between the political system currently governing the Republic of Nicaragua and a lethal viral infection within a cellular system. The map of the country is microscopically represented through a photomicrograph of human cells infected with Dengue virus and stained using an immunofluorescence technique. Its title derives from Rubén Darío’s poem of the same name, in which the uncertainty of life is explored from the perspective of a conscious being. A second analogy is drawn with Nicaraguan youth, who grow up within a repressive system where those in power transform mere subjectivities into absolute and irrefutable truths.

Author’s interpretation: Initially, cells wander through space as autonomous beings, tracing seemingly random paths. Yet as they multiply, an unseen order begins to emerge. Individual trajectories converge into a shared architecture, and what once appeared as a scattered gathering gradually unfolds into a living tissue. This microscopic landscape suggests that living entities, no matter how independent, may ultimately be part of a larger whole: a quiet fractal of existence unfolding from the collective.

Author’s interpretation: Do you really know who you are? We believe we know ourselves because we inhabit our bodies, but not everything that passes through our minds makes sense. We constantly create fictions and false interpretations. We must learn to filter our thoughts. After all, there is no self…

Author’s interpretation: Microscopic allegory of contemporary parliaments shaped by rigid partisanship, where individual legislative freedom is subordinated to strict party discipline and entrenched ideological blocs. The image depicts two cellular lineages standing divided. One, “lit,” occupies the lower region of the image, displaying large nuclei and abundant mitochondria. The other, “darkened,” resides in the upper region, marked by small nuclei and the mysterious absence of mitochondrial labeling. This population of “darkened” cells seeks to recruit new adherents to its cause among the cells of mixed morphology that linger along the border between both lineages.