PLEXUS
August 17 – December 29, 2024
ICA San Diego North 

For over a decade, San Diego-based artist Melissa Walter (b.1976, Providence, RI) has been translating complex scientific concepts into intimate and accessible visual  experiences. At ICA San Diego, Plexus combines new and existing works that continue Walter’s investigation into DNA identification technology and its application to criminal and civil laws. Working in drawing, sculpture, and video, Walter packs a wealth of information into highly detailed yet restrained compositions that illuminate the profound effects that DNA analysis can have on increasing equity in the American criminal justice system.  

In a series of projects from 2021, Walter traces the three main stages in the development of forensic DNA analysis since its invention in the 1980s. Works such as STR Systems 005, Obfuscated Phenotype 001, and a new site-specific iteration of the multi-part installation Southern Blot Method, provide an abstracted visual interpretation of elements in these scientific processes. Across the series, Walter’s mark-making intentionally becomes more precise, reflecting the increased accuracy of the technology over time. Crucially however, evidence of Walter's hand remains, reminding us of the role humans play in the implementation of these tools as well as the potential for human error.

The complexity of the relationship between new technologies and the people that use them is at the center of Walter’s most recent projects. Despite the introduction of DNA analysis, in the American criminal justice system the stakes of human error are as high as they come: unreliable eyewitness accounts, police coercion, and inadequate legal representation can all lead to the false arrests and convictions of innocent people. While accurate DNA analysis might prevent wrongful incarceration, our DNA can also be what makes us more susceptible to false accusation (a predisposition to addiction, for example, or one’s physical appearance in the face of racial bias). The situation is simultaneously uplifting and distressing: this life-saving technology may eliminate the potential for future false convictions, but it is currently laying bare the damage done by our existing criminal justice system. Walter’s work is a reminder that our social, scientific, judicial, and carceral systems are all ultimately part of a plexus–an interwoven combination of elements in a structure or system–that affects us all.

Text: Jordan Karney Chaim, Curator, ICA San Diego