Commissioned by the Faculty of Life Sciences, artist and Slade School of Fine Art PhD candidate Mary Yacoob presents a series of large-scale cyanotype prints inspired by the visual language of scientific research.
Through in-depth conversations and laboratory visits with researchers, Mary draws on the visual tools of science — microscopy, diagrams and hand-drawn sketches — to reimagine research as layered, aesthetic experiences. Her intricate blueprints reimagine this material, merging timescales and disciplines to create new aesthetic experiences. These works invite viewers to consider how artistic and scientific practices can intersect to generate speculative and exploratory visions of research.
Electrospun Fibres in Drugs for Spinal Cord Regeneration – in Dialogue with Dr Karolina Dziemidowicz, Lecturer, UCL School of Pharmacy.
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
Dr Karolina Dziemidowicz investigates how drug-loaded electrospun fibres can best be designed to guide the migration of fibroblast cells in the body, so that wounds can be healed more efficiently. Karolina showed Mary images of fibroblast cells migrating along aligned electrospun fibres loaded with riluzole, a drug which promotes spinal cord regeneration. During their meeting, Karolina also showed Mary diagrams of spinal cords in order to explain the effects of the drug on the body. Mary’s drawing superimposes images of the cells and individual electrospun fibres onto a cross-section diagram of the spinal cord. Overlapping the images of the healing fibre patches onto a representation of the body serves to illustrate their intended purpose and destination. The drawing merges different bodily spatial and temporal scales in the healing process.
Right image: A confocal micrograph showing the migration of fibroblasts seeded on drug-loaded implants for spinal cord injury’. Image taken by Mathilde Ullrich and Karolina Dziemidowicz
Unifying Representations in Biological and Artificial Systems – in Dialogue with Clémentine Dominé, PhD candidate at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
Clémentine Dominé researches how representations in the brain and of artificial networks align or diverge, in order to reveal key computational similarities and distinctions, despite differing physical substrates and architectures. Clémentine provided Mary with an illustration she created using Artificial Intelligence. The drawing that Mary produced in response to this suggests a more speculative integration of organic and artificial systems. Mary’s drawing adopts, deconstructs and merges symbols found in diagrams of neurons, circuit boards and artificial neural networks. The central image is inspired by a cross-section of a human brain. Frayed boundaries blend the central image into its surroundings, reflecting the notion of extended cognition — the idea that cognition involves networks of connections between the brain, body, tools, and the environment.
Right image: Neurograph: Emergence Across Systems’ (2025), AI-generated image by Clémentine Dominé
Honeybee Waggle Dance Map - in Dialogue with Elli Leadbeater, Professor of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Research, Division of Biosciences
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
Prof Elli Leadbeater researches how honeybees collectively forage for nectar and pollen. A forager bee will, through their waggle dance, convey information to other bees in their hive about the distance and direction of rich flower patches relative to the beehive and the direction of the sun. Elli decodes waggle dances in order to reveal the likely location of the flowers using probability heat maps. A more dense area of dots suggests a greater probability of the location of the patch. Mary’s drawing is based on a probability heat map of rural England in springtime. Seven circular diagrams of waggle dances surround the central map. The bigger circles denote a longer waggle dance, and therefore a longer flight time. Elli’s research in Southeast England shows that bees need to fly further away from their hive to find food in agricultural sites than in flower-rich urban areas. This suggests the need for improved floral provision on agricultural land to develop healthy ecosystems.
Right image: Dancing bees evaluate central urban forage resources as superior to agricultural land, by Ash E. Samuelson, Roger Schürch, and Ellouise Leadbeater
Self-Organisation: Spiral Waves that Shape Cell Motion - in Dialogue with Dr Hugh Ford, Research Fellow, Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology’
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
Mary met with Prof Jonathan Chubb and Dr Hugh Ford to learn about their research on Dictyostelium, a soil-dwelling single-celled amoeba. To navigate the soil—a very complex environment for something so small—these cells come together to form a multicellular group called the “slug”, which can process and respond to stimuli akin to touch, smell and sight. The secret of slug development and function is in the way these single cells “talk” to each other through excitable signalling, like our brain cells. Mary’s drawing is based on screenshots from Hugh’s video, which shows a spiral pattern of excitable signalling (highlighted by a yellow curve). In the video, cells aggregate around the spiral centre, the first stage of slug formation, or “birth”. By overlapping several spiral lines onto the final illustration, Mary’s drawing displays different snapshots of this development stage in a single two-dimensional image.
Right image: The self-organisation of amoeba cells through spiral waves, Dr Hugh Ford
Wave and Ray Optics - in Dialogue with Dr Isabell Whiteley, In Vivo Imaging Specialist, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
In discussions with Mary, Dr Isabell Whiteley observed that diagrams of light rarely depict both waves and rays, even though both are needed to fully explain how light works. Ray optics explain properties such as reflection and refraction, whereas wave optics are used to explain other properties such as diffraction and interference. Mary decided to make a drawing that combines both these aspects by basing her drawing, at Isabell’s suggestion, on Thomas Young’s double slit experiment, in which light shines through two narrow slits in a barrier, forming two waves of light. Mary’s drawing highlights a geometric property of Young’s diagram: the dome shape that occurs where two sets of light waves meet in the middle. The dome shape highlights points of constructive interference (where two light sources meet) and suggests an edifice of light, a crystal palace, grounding the abstractions of physics into more familiar corporeal experiences.
Right image: Working sketch by Mary Yacoob with additions by Dr Isabell Whiteley
Wood Wide Web - in Dialogue with Professor Stephen Price, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
Cyanotype print, variable edition of 30, 52cm x 70cm, 2025
Prof Stephen Price discussed with Mary his interest in ‘systems thinking’ and in the understanding of biology as an intrinsically interconnected, dynamic and process-driven set of systems. For example, Stephen showed Mary diagrams of the ‘wood wide web’ which reveal how the roots of trees are connected to each other via underground fungal networks, facilitating the mutually beneficial exchange of nutrients. In Mary’s drawing, the diameters of tree trunks are represented in icons of radial patterns suggestive of branch-like growth. Two types of fungal colonies are shown in blocked or dotted meandering curves. Lines show which trees are most highly connected with fungal networks. The artwork draws attention to the symbiotic webs which are fundamental to these ecosystems.
Right image: Working sketch by Mary Yacoob
About Mary Yacoob
Mary Yacoob is an artist based in London. Solo exhibitions include Bobinska Brownlee New River, Surgery Gallery, Five Years Gallery and the Hospital Club. Group shows include the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Laurent Delaye, Thames-Side Studios, Phoenix Art Space, Gallery 46, and Ruskin Gallery. Mary was the recipient of an Arts Council England award for her exhibition and publication Schema. Mary is co-author of the book ‘Drawing Analogies: Diagrams in Art, Theory and Practice’ with artists and academics David Burrows, John Cussans and Dean Kenning, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2025.
Mary’s art practice encompasses ink on paper, printmaking, wall drawings, large scale vinyl artworks and exhibition light boxes. She redeploys visual languages of electrical and engineering diagrams, architectural plans, cartography, alphabetical systems, and musical notation. Mary researches and transfigures visual source materials, creating intricate and speculative thought forms that explore drawing systems and geometry, order and chance, appropriation and interpretation. By taking diagrams out of their original context, she transforms them into mysterious cyphers for the imagination, creating connections between disciplines.
All cyanotype images copyright Mary Yacoob.