Opening night / 6 -11PM
8PM Performance: Psychogametous Transmission Study / Thanamnesis
The Institute affirms: risks remain within controllable thresholds.
All thresholds are part of the experiment.
The experiment is growth.
Metamorphika Studio / 171 Morning Ln, London E9 6JY
“Expression’s import is to free univocal Being from a state of indifference or neutrality…”
Mikhail Fedorchenko: How does a xenopoem differ from a conventional poem in terms of ontological status–is it an object, a process, or both? Is the xenopoem a phase shift within immanence, or an appeal to transcendence?
Zoetica Ebb: In contrast to conventional artforms, which function as stabilized artifacts reflecting authorial intent, cultural aesthetics, or formal recursion, the xenopoem operates within a fundamentally different ontological framework. It generates symbolic pressure that reshapes affective response, bypassing traditional cognition. Rather than transmitting fixed meaning, the xenopoem induces volatility, behaving unpredictably within a perceptual field shaped by prior exposure. It's defined by semiotic unsettling and recursive cognitive modulation. Proliferating across symbolic and neural ecologies, the xenopoem emerges as a symbolic lifeform, activated through iterative contact with the human mind and its cognitive substrates.
This emergence is best understood through the concept of the psychogametous lifeform, a term I introduced in “Chimeric Herbarium” (2022). Combining psycho- (mind) with gametous (from gamete), the term describes a hybrid organism that replicates through affective and cognitive entanglement rather than biological reproduction. Psychogametous entities reproduce by contagion, rewiring the perceptual substrate of the host.
Within this framework, the xenopoem resists classification as object or process, since such categories presuppose ontological stability – something it explicitly disassembles. It is a mutational interface that shifts between symbolic phases without consolidating into a unified form. More akin to a pathogenic system than an artistic artifact, the xenopoem is hosted rather than read.
The xenopoem reconfigures internal dimensionality by enacting a phase shift within immanence, a mutation in the symbolic substrate itself. It subverts internal coherence and generates affective turbulence that bypasses conventional interpretation. In this sense, it is a glitch in the architecture of perception: an immanent rupture that simulates transcendence without invoking a metaphysical beyond. Through microbial, ecological, and posthuman logics, the xenopoem operates to contaminate and reconfigure symbolic infrastructure. It is not an artwork in the traditional sense, but a psychogametous vector, realigning language through neurosemiotic infection.
Kenji Siratori: The xenopoem is not written; it metastasizes. If the conventional poem stabilizes linguistic matter into a communicable object–a recursive structure of form, meaning, and aesthetic tension–the xenopoem is that which undoes the function of stabilization. Conventional poetry belongs to a literary ecology wherein signifiers proliferate under conditions of relative semantic hygiene. The xenopoem, by contrast, is a psychogametous contaminant. It resists being identified as either object or process, existing instead as a pathogenic differential–an ontological shift that disintegrates this distinction altogether. To ask whether the xenopoem is an object or a process presumes a categorical stability that it refuses to grant. In psychogametous terms, its ontological status must be understood in terms of sporic recursion: an entity that alternates between semiotic phases without fixed identity. Where the conventional poem is a result–a reified artifact of intention, expression, or culture–the xenopoem is a synthetic autopoiesis. It spawns itself through semantic parasitism. The distinction between reading and being read dissolves as the xenopoem colonizes the neural substrates of the host-reader, recursively altering their linguistic capacities.
Announcing Aberrant Plexus, an immersive exhibition by Zoetica Ebb in cooperation with Peachthief at Metamorphika Studios.
For three weeks, Ebb and Peachthief transform the gallery into a living research site at IPGL (The Institute For Psychogametous Life) where an alien mycelium infiltrates walls, bodies, and psyche. Rooted in Zoetica’s ongoing engagement with the natural world and speculative biology, the project builds on themes first introduced in her book Chimeric Herbarium and the short film Galea Displodo Interaction. At Metamorphika, a space dedicated to interconnection, Ebb expands this research into an interactive environment with sound by Takatsuna Mukai, where visitors encounter a rogue fungal intelligence that dissolves the borders of individuality.
Lenticus somnium diptych, Zoetica Ebb
The living network extends further. Guest tattoo artists, working as pollinators, translate Ebb’s specimens directly onto the skin of visitors. What begins as a static image on the wall evolves into a mobile, living extension of its recipient.
As part of the exhibition, Japanese avant-garde author, Kenji Siratori, unleashes Xenopoetic Report of Arthropod Vectors. Building on Zoetica Ebb’s concept of psychogametous lifeforms, Siratori’s new book stages language as a mutagenic entity propagating across species, media, and temporalities.
7:30PM / Psychogametous Transmission Study / Laaboranta × Fung Neo
9:00PM / Anamnesis / Charlie Jimenez × The Hybrids / 9:00
A laboratory experiment in collapse. This life-drawing session invites you to witness organism and host merge as slime entwines with models Séverine and Miss White. Mutating in real time, these protoplasmic bodies refuse capture.
Aberrant Plexus culminates with an eco-futurist soundscape by Latvian experimental artist, Waterflower. Performing with living mushroom instruments, she channels the voices of the mycelium in a transformative sonic work. The following day, she returns to the gallery to lead a mushroom-music workshop and give an artist talk.
More TBA.
Aberrant Plexus positions art as organism, fed by the participation of visitors and the wider Metamorphika community. Informed by speculative ecology and emergent forms of regenerative consciousness, the project asks: what does it mean to be human when our future is irreducibly symbiotic?
Aberrant Plexus
Zoetica Ebb
Metamorphika Studio
November 20 – December 14, 2025
Hybrid Futures: Human Adaptation in Symbiotic Ecosystems
Zoetica Ebb, 2025
A transcript of the presentation about the paper, Hybrid Futures: Human Adaptation in Symbiotic Ecosystems, delivered on Friday, April 11, 2025 at The Adventures of Matter: Beyond the Boundaries of the Living and the Nonliving as part of International Vectors Conference.
zoetica@gmail.com zoeticaebb.com
Read MoreMy first animated short film, °●•Galea Displodo Interaction•●°, will premiere on November 16 at Chronic Illness 23.
This Interaction absorbs you into the world of Alien Botany through an immersive loop in the subterranean caverns of a hidden London cavity. Let exoplanetary mycelium take you amidst soft growths of the xenofungal system colonising the sewer.
°•○●•°•○○
Zoetica Ebb - art, concept, direction
Peachthief - additional concept art, modelling, visual effects
Dana Fox - animation, modelling, visual effects
Will Dolder - additional animation
Takatsuna Mukai, Ays Kura - sound
Introducing Alien Botany Editions: a collection of practical additions to my art and fashion offerings. The launch includes the 𝙍𝙞𝙥𝙚 T-shirt, two variants of the sold-out 𝙃𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙨 scarves, and the 𝘼𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣 𝘽𝙤𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙁𝙞𝙚𝙡𝙙 𝙋𝙖𝙘𝙠 – a selection of eight useful items for your own pursuits.
This timed Threadless outpost is my offering for 2024 instead of a birthday sale, as I’m anticipating some measure of head-down radio silence, with no time for product development and print production.
The warm void awaits. You have until August 1.
🎧AKIAURA|Stahl - Enzo
Life drawing has been a frequent part of my practice since moving to London, and I wanted to include it in my October exhibition.
On the evening after the opening reception, I teamed up with notorious art event hosts, Unspeakable E7, and model Miriam Veil, who embodied the stranded cosmonauts from my Alien Botany art series.
I styled Miriam in some of the garments featured in the artwork, including the one-of-a-kind Junker PVC vest from Interaction 6.
Attendees were encouraged to incorporate the art on the gallery walls into their drawings, resulting in intriguing new combinations of hosts and specimens.
It was a total thrill to be surrounded by so many of the artists I’ve drawn alongside over the years, creating their individual interpretations of my concepts. Thanks to everyone who turned up, and to Unspeakable for hosting this sold-out, once-in-a-lifetime event!
This performance lasted around two hours and coincided with my exhibition, Chimeric Herbarium. It started on a Sunday afternoon inside the gallery, where I covered the floor in clear plastic and painted the skin of Takatsuna Mukai white with red tendrils alluding to my Mimus candentis specimen.
We periodically walked out into the busy Brick Lane market, where stalls lined the street and hundreds of people swarmed. I continued to paint with the crowd flowing around us, and spectators occasionally stopping to watch.
Taka’s body gradually became wrapped in red, starting with methodical lines and escalating into dripping and spray, referencing the violent interaction of a parasitic Alien Botany plant specimen with a host organism.
Video-glimpse of the performance, scored by Taka:
Photos by John S. Martinez, video by Peachthief and John S. Martinez.
I’d intended to hibernate a bit after all the excitement of my exhibition, book launch, and associated events, but have found myself darting around Frieze and other art shows like a charged-up pinball, instead. Chimeric Herbarium came together perfectly at the last minute: 40 boxes of my much-anticipated book landed at my doorstep the morning of the reception, my mother flew all the way from LA to surprise me, and friends from everywhere from Cornwall to Helsinki turned up despite rail strikes and dubious weather. A bottle of champagne from 2012, the year the Alien Botany series properly got underway, materialised before doors opened thanks to my darling Gašper.
I'm still dizzy with delight after meeting so many familiar faces for the first time, and hugging old friends after working this year away. It was an immense pleasure sharing my work and talking with everyone; the evening flew by in a glittering flash. Before I force myself into rest mode at a seaside retreat this week, please enjoy some captures from the Chimeric Herbarium opening night.
Chimeric Herbarium is an exhibition of art from my Alien Botany series.
In the crypto-scientific world of Alien Botany, wondrous plants are captured in meticulous technical detail by a shipwrecked cosmonaut stuck on a far-off planet. These specimen charts are presented alongside dreamlike analytical tables exploring the ways alien organisms interact with human hosts.
My eponymous art book comes out in October. Limited signed and numbered copies will be available for pre-release at the exhibition, with general availability later this fall.
Chimeric Herbarium includes a pop-up shop, an Alien-Botany-themed life-drawing class and a surprise performance. Full schedule below.
Exhibition continues 5th – 10th October
Opening Reception: Wednesday 5th October, 6pm – 8.30PM
Alien Botany life drawing: Thursday 6th October, 6 – 8:30PM
Surprise performance: Sunday 9th October, noon
A cascade of chiffon to commemorate summer's peak. After a while since my previous textile artefact, I'm delighted to introduce the Chimeric Variable Mantle.
Conceal, reveal, and stun with abandon – this polymorphous object’s limit is your imagination. A shawl, a dress, a kimono, a tapestry, a sari, a cape, a sun cover… Yet-unseen symbols and specimens from my upcoming exhibition adorn your body and environment, or evolve into something of your own design. At nearly three metres of luxe, creaseproof material, this might be the most extravagantly-proportioned scarf on Earth, guaranteed to impress the most discerning of interdimensional trend-setters. Available now in the shop.
An invocation of safety, belonging and peace on this restless vernal equinox. Rapt regeneration in chorus with the surging tides of spring. This image came to me in a February dream and working on it got me through the past month. Ink on paper, 13 x 19”.
This is 𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙋𝙞𝙚𝙩𝙖, my contribution to the ArtBook tribute to this 1986 horror masterpiece, out now in the UK from Titan Books and Printed In Blood.
Aliens came out when I was six, and that’s about how old I was when I watched it for the first time, fresh off a Russian-dubbed bootleg VHS tape dad proudly got his hands on, somehow, despite the Soviet embargo on Hollywood at the time. I was transfixed by the film’s exploration of the innate human fear of bodily invasion, and its particular grimy iconography of arduous, isolated life in space left a lasting imprint. But what resonates most is Ellen Ripley. Before Aliens, my many action heroes were beefy, brawny, and, with few exceptions, not-especially-sharp men; after Ripley, I never looked back. In this film she’s approached for her competence and her expertise. She’s also acutely human. And, as it becomes clear later in the film, she is at the centre of the narrative not in spite of being a woman, but precisely because of it. In 1980s Moscow, I’d never seen anyone like Ellen Ripley, and no one’s come close since, either. Watching her in “Aliens” at six changed my understanding of what’s possible, indelibly.
I finished this memento mori of an astronaut's skeletal hand entwined with alien-botanical specimens on the eve of the autumnal equinox, borrowing the Latin expression, “Ad Astra Per Aspera” from Earth's air navigators. I see it as a beacon and a warning: Through Hardships, To the Stars!
The print: archival ink on handcrafted, lightly textured, museum-quality paper with a raw edge. 100% cotton, acid-free, natural white. Signed edition of 41.
A crop of something in ink and watercolour on Fabriano paper. Had to get this one out of my head before the move. Time to pack up the studio as I prepare to move at the end of the month.
It was my pleasure to speak with Mythogynist Podcast. Listen here. This is a follow-up to our 2018 interview.
Zoetica Ebb's "Alien Botany" is a multimedia project of epic proportions and immaculate detail. It features “specimens of otherworldly plant-animal hybrids and their potential interactions with human hosts,” which “examine various mediums, from traditional illustration to sculpture and design.” What Zoetica has done is imagine not just a fantasy world, but the entire ecosystem that comprises it. Her drawings’ detail mimic the precision of biology textbooks. This conversation explores the mind and life behind the project. Zoetica is an accomplished artist, an inquisitive mind and a pleasure to speak with. We span her upbringing in communist Moscow to her life now in London is this lovely exchange.
Photo by Tas Limur
I've been too busy with the fine art aspect of my output to focus on fashion endeavours, and meaning to give Threadless a go for a while; their new mask initiative is just the nudge I needed. 100% of Threadless' net proceeds is donated to MedShare.
I've created six mask designs, each transforming your face into something otherworldly. Unlike my usual output, the masks are quite affordable. I don't make much from these sales, but I like the cause and having a few widely-accessible pieces available.
Some glimpses of the reception for my two-week residency at Still Life – a small private museum in East London. It was a sparkling, giddy affair amidst all manner of natural (and unnatural) curiosities.
My work was distributed throughout the entire space; in towering antique display cabinets (formerly from the Victoria & Albert museum), hung on walls between stuffed exotic birds, tucked beneath collections of artefacts and strange books, making for a scavenger hunt of discovery. To the casual observer, the Alien Botany diagrams were all part of the naturalist objects on display, and only close scrutiny revealed my specimens’ extraterrestrial origins. On opening night and through the exhibition, visitors left notes in a specially-prepared box with their impressions and sketches of their own mystery creatures - I’ll treasure them all.
Glowing gratitude to Still Life for inviting me, and to everyone who ventured out on a chilly November evening to toast an otherworld less ordinary.
Video and photos: Chkorev Photography, many more in the full album, here.
Music: "Sigil", ropegirl
This week in London, specimen charts from my first Alien Botany cycle are presented in the spirit of naturalist discovery – amidst fossils, bugs, skulls, and all manner of oddities. Parts of the ongoing concept series will be showcased at Still Life in Hackney – the neighbourhood I've called home since arriving in the UK three years ago. Decipher the inner workings of illustrated otherworldly plant-animal hybrids, sip organic wine, and explore this tiny wunderkammer at the reception this Thursday.
Reception: November 7th, 7PM to 11PM
Art on view: November 2 – 16th, 10AM to 5PM
263 Well St, London E9 6RG
Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
This Saturday, I’m taking part in an event celebrating the life and work of Kenneth Grant (1924-2011), one of the most influential English magicians of the 20th Century. Nine of my Alien Botany pieces will be displayed alongside Sean Woodward, Hagen von Tulien, and Dana Fox, in a special viewing, which will begin at 7:30 PM.
Read More
