The Faculty of Science Artist-in-Residence (AiR) program facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations between professional artists and Faculty professors. Complex scientific research is turned into compelling art pieces that engage the public. These creative perspectives then spark new research questions and scientific discoveries.
As the AiR program takes flight in its inaugural year, we’re thrilled to welcome three talented artists whose creativity will enrich our science community.
Clara Laratta: Embracing entangled ecologies
An award-winning intermedia artist based in Hamilton, Ontario, Clara Laratta uses research-creation methodologies to position humans and nonhumans on an equal footing. She explores the interconnectedness of material, ecological and embodied systems.
Laratta’s work is featured in more than 20 archival and permanent collections worldwide, including curated exhibition archives at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Communication in Berlin and Bern, and the Canadian Association for Health Humanities Archive.
For Laratta, materials and organic matter in art are not passive media, but active artistic collaborators. This human-nonhuman entanglement underpins her work with biology professor Cory Harris. Focusing on yarrow (Achillea millefolium), a plant whose single bloom contains hundreds of florets, their project turns scientific residues into art, revealing how plants adapt and thrive through interconnected systems.
Laratta and Harris merge ethnobotany and contemporary art to explore the shared resilience of plants and people as they adapt to ever-changing environments.
“Using yarrow fibre and scientific residue, I’m working towards an embodied methodology to map the messy adaptations of ancestral knowledge, tracking the resilience of diasporic bodies and ecosystems.”
Clara Laratta
Angela Marsh: Reimagining urban nature
Originally from Toronto, Angela Marsh is a visual artist, activist and passionate arts educator. She’s pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD in art and ecology at Université Laval. Her art has been exhibited across Ontario and Quebec and has earned her prestigious awards, including the David Suzuki Rewilding Art Prize (2023) and the CALQ Artist in the Community Prize (2025).
Approaching her work through a more-than-human lens, Marsh asks a pivotal question: In the age of the Anthropocene, marked by a rapidly warming climate, what if wild, spontaneous plants (derogatively referred to as “weeds”) offer key insights into environmental resilience and adaptation?
To address this, she and biology professor Heather Kharouba are exploring the impact of native–exotic plant communities in urban prairies and biodiversity gardens as we face climate change.
Using sculptural installations and stenciling, Marsh explores how art can help us connect with urban meadows. Her work advocates for multispecies justice amid the climate crisis, encouraging viewers to recognize the value of forms of nature often dismissed as “messy” in a society that prizes manicured lawns and gardens. In doing so, she investigates how ecological knowledge can drive artistic research and how art can make a positive environmental impact.
“To explore integrating novel ecosystems into urban landscapes, I believe we need new culture-nature, art-science discussions and creations that encourage human-wild entanglements.”
Angela Marsh
Cristian Zaelzer: The beauty of scientific jargon
A true interdisciplinarian at heart, Chilean-Canadian Cristian Zaelzer has built a career at the intersection of science and art.
After earning a PhD in molecular and cell biology and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience, he turned his attention to intermedia art, exploring media such as stained glass, acrylic painting, art-based graphic design, photography and poetry.
This unexpected path ultimately led him to starting an independent art practice and founding the Convergence Initiative, an internationally recognized and award-winning non-profit with whom he won a 2020 CAN Neuroscience Outreach & Advocacy Award. The initiative advances neuroscience education and public engagement through art collaboration.
Today, Zaelzer teaches neuroscience to fine arts students, encouraging them to embrace creative perspectives and the power of interdisciplinary collaborations.
Collaborating with Professor Adam Shuhendler in the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Zaelzer is examining shifts in technical language across decades of laboratory archives.
Zaelzer reminds us that art has long communicated complex ideas. Chilean arpilleras (textile art) under Pinochet’s dictatorship told stories and resisted oppression when words were dangerous, while medieval stained glass made religious narratives understandable to the illiterate. In our current era of widespread misinformation online, accessible and engaging science communication is essential. Zaelzer’s project, Have you seen my carbon nanotubes? turns complex molecular vocabulary into visual narratives to foster greater scientific literacy among the public.
“Scientific jargon packages concepts. It allows for precise, efficient communication within a field. I want to convey its beauty in a way people instantly connect with”
Cristian Zaelzer