AnneMarie Maes (or Annemie Maes) – Brussels, 1955 holds a master in fine arts from Luca School of Arts, Brussels, a master in cultural studies from the University of Brussels (VUB), and a specialisation in anthropological documentary film from the Institute for Sound Image Culture in Brussels.

In 2004 AnneMarie Maes co-founded the artist collective OKNO which has been active on the border between new media and ecology. OKNO uses DIY and collective artist practices to find new ways to engage with the urban environment. In 2009 she founded the Brussels Urban Bee Lab [BUBL] as a spin-off from OKNO. It focuses on urban bee colonies as a vehicle for novel artistic practices to raise ecological awareness.
Maes has for decades been a recognized leader pioneering art-science projects in Belgium, using highly original ways to bring out hidden structures in nature by constructing original technological methods to probe the living world and by translating that in artistic creations through sonification, visualization, sculptures, large-scale long-term installations, and workshops. She thus makes use of technological mediation to search for new forms of communication with the natural world.

The Brussels Urban Bee Lab is an independent international collective of artists, scientists, beekeepers, technicians and creative people. The BUBL uses artistic, scientific and technological research approaches to tackle challenges related to sustainability and the monitoring and survival of city honeybees. Bee colonies are currently threatened in Europe at an alarming rate and BUBL’s research is therefore of great importance, both by raising awareness and by providing unprecedented data for studying bee colony collapse disorder.
An extensive rooftop garden in the centre of Brussels hosts the headquarters of the BUBL laboratory. It is giving place to several experimental beehives and instrumentation equipment. From this laboratory, data is continuously being broadcast through streaming technology.

AnneMarie Maes and the Brussels Urban Bee Lab operate mainly through artistic installations and workshops. AnneMarie Maes has exhibited widely in international contexts, including in various European countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, etc.) as well as the US (New York), Syria, India and Brazil. The installations explore highly experimental technologies, such as microbial fuel cells, digital and organic fabrication using OpenStructures, biomimicry, spatialised sonification, web-based continuous data streaming, data mining based on Artificial Intelligence, organic electronics, solar energy for powering low-energy computing, etc.
The group collaborates with universities and other artistic research centers throughout Europe.

Anne Marie Maes (BE) is an artist and researcher with an extensive track record in socially engaged art projects that strive for greater awareness about the fragility of our natural environment and for the adoption of strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change. She has worked extensively with communities on urban agriculture, the creation of connected urban green corridors and the installation and monitoring of innovative beehives. This translated into documentaries, participatory art works and installations. In parallel, Anne Marie Maes has been exploring the living world for creating a new aesthetic and novel materials such as fabrics based on bacteria, algae and plants. This has also lead to a wide range of art works and installations shown in prestigious galleries and museums. A third strand of Maes her art practice focuses on digital technologies. With her art collective she pioneered in the 1990s a range of innovations for peer-to-peer telecommunication networks, web content creation and environmental monitoring. In the 2000s she worked with AI researchers and robotics engineers to embed intelligence in her bee-related installations and more recently she has been exploring augmented reality and semantic web technologies to raise awareness of the fragile ecologies in the North Sea.

AnneMarie was a fellow in international art/science programs, has written articles and academic papers and has published several publications on her work. She realized artworks commissioned for public space, as ‘Closed Circuits’ (Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Brussels) and ‘Elbe Bienen’ for the art in public space program of the city of Hamburg (De). She was awarded several prizes and mentions in prestigeous festivals as Ars Electronica among others. AnneMarie Maes has exhibited widely as a solo-artist and in group exhibitions in prestigious musea, galleries, public spaces and art-science festivals in many EU countries, the Americas and Asia.
Key museum exhibitions include at Bozar (Brussels, BE), National Arts Museum (Latvia), Borges Cultural Center (Buenos Aires, Argentinia), Domeinen (Sittard, NL), Science and Technology Museum (Milan, IT), Museu do Amanha (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil), Fundacio Miro (Barcelona, ES), Haus der Elektronische Kunste, (Basel, CH), IMAL (Brussels, BE), IKOB Museum of Contemporary art (Eupen, BE), Laboral (Gijon, ES), Museum for Art and Architecture – MAAT (Lisbon, PO), amongst others.
Important festival participations include Ars-Electronica (Linz, AU), Transmediale (Berlin, DE), Mirage Festival (Lyon, FR), PIKSEL (Bergen, NO), Resonances (Ispra, IT).
Gallery shows include at Sapar Contemporary Art (New York), Silva Zona (Korcula, Croatia), Koç University Gallery (Istambul), Skolska Gallery (Prague), PILAR Free University Gallery (Brussels, BE), Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin,BE), Emergent (Veurne, BE), SongEun ArtSpace (Seoul, South Korea).

————
korte BIO (2020)

AnneMarie Maes (BE) bevindt zich op het vlak tussen kunst en wetenschap. Ze bestudeert interacties en co-evoluties binnen stedelijke ecosystemen. Haar onderzoekspraktijk combineert kunst en wetenschap, met grote interesse voor DIY-technologieën en biotechnologie. Ze werkt met een scala aan biologische, digitale en traditionele media, waaronder levende organismen. Haar artistiek onderzoek materialiseert zich in techno-organische objecten die geïnspireerd zijn op feitelijke/fictionele verhalen; in artefacten die een combinatie zijn van digitale fabricage en vakmanschap; in installaties die zowel het probleem als de mogelijke oplossing weerspiegelen, in multispecies samenwerkingen, in polymorfe vormen en modellen gecreëerd door eco-data. Zowel Bee agency als Laboratory for Form and Matter, waarin ze experimenteert met bacteriën en levend textiel, vormen een kader voor een breed scala aan installaties, sculpturen, fotowerken, objecten en boeken. Het Intelligent Guerilla Beehive project kreeg een Eervolle Vermelding in de categorie Hybride Kunst tijdens Ars Electronica.

Voor lijst tentoonstellingen, check CV