Through its nature and abundance iron has emerged as essential to life. The iron that runs through our veins and allows us to breathe is the same element from which the tools were fashioned that have allowed humanity to not only survive, but flourish, for millennia.

In this lecture, artist Cecilia Jonsson will present and share insight to her long-standing exploration of iron, with each project revealing how the mineral intercedes the cycles of matter, fluid, life and meaning. Approaching the raw materials physical and ideological properties from a sensory perspective, as a context, a resource and as a moderator or mediator of other processes. Her research has as a result, encompassed different industrial side-effects to how the ‘iron-loving’ species are transformed by and in-part transform mineral cycles as sculpting forces. This presentation will be anchored in the materiality and processes behind selected works, including projects inspired via a wide range of scientific disciplines and how this fluctuation informs and pleats the modes of operation recurrent in her practice.