Evolving Sensitivities investigates the allergic body as a site of knowledge through self-experimentation, biohacking and food transformation. Beginning with Margherita’s rare diagnosis at fourteen, an allergy to all fruits and vegetables, raw and cooked, the project examines the tensions between medical classification and lived bodily experience.
Fermentation and cooking become research methods for exploring how different processes alter her encounters with food. Through self-experimentation, she investigated the relationships between ingredients, microorganisms and immune responses, questioning how tolerance is understood and where the boundaries of digestion lie.

The research takes material form in Digestors, a series of glass stomach vessels holding fermented food. These external digestive organs give shape to processes of microbial transformation that begin before ingestion. Moving digestion beyond the body, the vessels explore nourishment as a shared activity between human and microbial life.

Supported by the Amsterdam Fund voor de Kunst through the 3Package Deal BioArt coalition, in collaboration with Waag, Mediamatic, Justin Stewart and Toby Kiers (VU Amsterdam).

Curated by Bogomir Doringer, exhibited at Felix Meritis,2023
Photography and video: Anne Lakeman
Featured in the medical technology magazine MT Integraal (Dutch): read the article.