Installed over two floors of a colossal abandoned leisure centre in North London, TRANSGENESIS is a new site-specific installation by Agnes Questionmark Assuming the form of a submerged and experimental laboratory, the exhibition is a reverse-periscope into the engineering of a posthuman amphibian species — the latest in a series of significant solo exhibitions that place the artist’s body at the centre of a underwater world of transformation and discovery.

Following the embryogenesis of this new species through site-specific sculpture, choreography, performance and sound, the reality underscored in TRANSGENESIS is a model of profound symbiosis. It is ecological and queer, critical of binary oppositions and assertive of the powers of water to precipitate new and adaptive lifeforms attuned to the desperate state of our ecological crisis. Central to the exhibition is the figure of the octopus—a symbol coextensive with the artist’s body and its tentacular environment. Arguing against the fetishes of blood, earth and origin, TRANSGENESIS is an exhibition that argues for a dissipated, eroticized and flowing interaction between human and habitat, an alien presence that we can neither assimilate nor expel.

Driven by the sonorous and fluvial molecules of this alien body, an ensemble of dancers—choreographed in collaboration with Magnus Westwell—articulates the metamorphosis between larva and nymph in anticipation of Demande’s core durational performance. We spoke with Agnes on day 6 of their durational performance, discussing the importance of water, transitional states, and the need for radical transformation of our self-conception of the human.

Your latest solo show, TRANSGENESIS, opened on 30 April in an abandoned leisure center in Belsize Park, London, produced by The Orange Garden in partnership with Harlesden Highstreet. It is a landmark exhibition for your practice, collaborating with several creative partners and working at a phenomenal scale. What are some of the key ideas behind the show?

TRANSGENESIS announces a rebirth, a metamorphosis and a transition. It is the biggest project I have ever done and also the most personal. The exhibition is a journey into the body of a hybrid inhuman creature. This body is warm, moving and changing. Exactly like mine. In the show, my body is the subject of an experiment. A body that extends from the larva at the entrance of the show, the tentacular fetus, the deep sea creatures crawling around the anemone to the half-human half cephalopod that I live in. It is a constant exchange of what’s happening within my body and the rest of the space. I am the mother octopus dedicated to their offspring, feeding other creatures.

While you see this posthuman creature, you see the transformation of my body taking place in front of you. It is a performance that never ends, a continuous movement and constant evolution. My body is a potential being, that can become everything and anything I want. This is a message I want to spread. To see yourself as potential. My transition and my transgenesis have never been so exciting for me, it’s a new life, a new beginning and I am very proud to share it with incredible people and artists I have collaborated with for this show. And this fluidity needs to be applied to everything else: to life itself, social structures, human behavior, ways of thinking. All need to be liquid and ready to change, mutate and transform.

This project is a sensorial experience, something you have to feel through your skin and body. For me, it was fundamental to work collaboratively with other artists. Each costume was designed by Erica Curci with hand printed latex, creating a texture of cuttlefish. The costumes are worn by 5 dancers choreographed by Magnus Westwell. Filippo Tosti created an immersive sound installation from a sonic library of water, pumps, syringes, and other objects underwater to create the internal sounds produced by the creature. As you enter the space it seems to enter inside the creature’s body and the sound guides you in this fluid experience. And finally, the curators Arturo Passacantando, Tommaso de Benedictis, and Charlie Mills who have accompanied my thoughts and decisions.

For the exhibition, you will undertake a significant durational performance: 184 hours over 23 consecutive days. This will be in parallel to the performance program of dancers choreographed by Sadler’s Wells Young Associate, Magnus Westwell. How do you hope each of these elements will bring the show to life in new ways for the audience?

At time of writing, it is the 6th day of performance and I am already exhausted. Being there, performing, is weakening my body the same as the hormones I take every day are poisoning me. I started taking hormones the day I arrived in London to install the show. It was the beginning of my transformation. I needed to share my private life with the public sphere. I decided to open the door of my life and share my process, my transition. To me, the performance does not start when I enter the octopus and finishes when I get out, it is constant. It happens continuously, when I go back home, when I do my routine, eat food and rest my body. It is a ritual, a series of rituals that I repeat which constitute the whole experience as a transformation. This is the basis of evolution, we can’t avoid it. While we go out and perform our normal daily life our body is writing the genes of human evolution. We are writing our history and projecting our future. It's an unconscious process that I nevertheless believe we can control.

TRANSGENESIS signals a shift in tone for your work. Whereas in previous installations there was an organic symbiosis between human and aquatic environment, now there is the concurrent presence of science and genetic engineering. How do you feel about the introduction of scientific intervention in your work — is it intended as a tool for liberation or control?

I met Agnes 5 years ago in front of a painting. She whispered into my ear and I welcomed her into my life. Since then I write letters to her, I think of her, I talk to her. Last year, I decided to become Agnes. Embracing Agnes was a moment of liberation. My personality changed, my behavior and routines too. My life permeates my practice and I therefore changed my ways of making and creating. My process of thinking is changing too: it is more fluid, or as Donna Haraway put it, more tentacular. I broke from my past, let it go and started to explore new territories and unknown paths. I stopped using ceramic and instead embraced more fluid and soft materials such as latex, foam and resin.

Studying underwater behaviors and approaching my work with a deeper scientific analysis, I developed fluid concepts of transformation. I was also able to participate in a Masterclass by Dr. Nicolai Roterman who exposed his research on yeti crabs that live kilometers underwater. It was incredible to see the process of mutations and metamorphosis taking place. I am interested in evolutionary processes but also in genetic control.

At the same time, I was reading transhumanist theories and looking at cryopreservation, artificial insemination and cyborgs. The idea of being able to change your body means that we can change and become something else. The gender transition process is similar to a transhuman process. It is a genetic modification, a technological alteration, an artificial mutation. It releases who you are, but at the same time, it becomes a cage. Since the start of the transition, you submit yourself to medication and lose control of your body. The reaction is unexpected, anything could happen or go wrong. It's a submission, you are chained.

TRANSGENESIS celebrates queer futurism, championing principles of collaboration, symbiosis, and transformation through a science fiction lens. Do you ever feel a tension between this future-orientated vision of ecological symbiosis with the more nostalgic aspiration toward a past harmony between humankind and nature?

Gender-bending and gender dysphoria are still a debate. I see it as a recurring process in the future of human beings. Technology has developed to make us able to change our sex, but also grow antennas in our brain, extend limbs and replace our organs. The concept of humanity is lost and into pieces. We must urge to reshape humanity. The future of human beings is the one of mutation and alteration. My dysphoria is not only gender-related but of species too. I wish I could find a hormone that allows me to become an octopus. I dream of an underwater society, fluid and permeated with the sea.

What first drew your interest in the sea and the use of water as a central medium in your work? And why, in particular, is the figure of the octopus so central to TRANSGENESIS?

My father is a sailor and I grew up in the sea. I first learned the names of fish, rather than that of philosophers. At the age of 8, I learned how to dive. The experience of breathing underwater made me feel like a fish. When I am underwater I feel secure, I feel in my habitat. The quiet and peaceful environment, the weightless gravity, brings me to my mother’s womb which I am still not able to abandon. ‘Regressus ad Uterum’, Sàndor Ferenczi writes, is the desire of going back into the womb. Through my art and my installations, I create a uterine experience for myself and the spectator. An experience that brings us to our origin and makes us question our relation to water.

The octopus is the great mother. A symbol of maternity and dedication. Their nervous system is so complex that it allows them to think with their tentacles. Their brain is decentred and develops in every part of their body. It's a fluid mind with a fluid body, open to transformation and adaptation. Symbolically mistreated, the octopus was always represented as a monster or a danger. Associated with the unknown, the octopus has been depicted as the unconscious. It’s an incredible creature full of potential and a great ally for humans. We ought to establish a new connection with these creatures, see them as friends and collaborators rather than food and economy. Life develops in symbiosis and metamorphosis. Becoming the octopus is the first step to establish a deeper connection with new forms of life.

Finally, are there any other upcoming projects you would like to tell us about?

This summer I am preparing a project on mermaids and a syndrome called Sirenomelia, a rare deformity in which newborns legs are fused together. After summer I begin a new chapter of my life. I received a Merit Scholarship for the MFA at Pratt Institute in New York.