Environment & Energy

“This Fund promotes environmental or social characteristics, but does not aim to invest sustainably.

One wildly popular group that directly received Epstein funding is Neri Oxman’s Mediated Matter. The subject of glowing profiles in publications ranging from Elle magazine to the New York Times, Oxman—whose exhibition “Material Ecology” opens at the Museum of Modern Art in February—has become a model for making engineering fashionable. Her team uses synthetic biology and computer-aided design strategies to extract energy and patterns from living organisms, deploying life itself. While the actual utility of their work is unclear, the group’s demos—pigmented walls, “wearable” artificial skins, and biomorphic sculptures made from materials like silk and cellulose—are very beautiful. Structures made from melatonin, algae, and bacteria growing in ornate structures produce an aesthetic imaginary of a future where non-human organisms are further exploited, though not to any clear end.