Miljohn Ruperto: Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral @ Cantor Arts Center
Join Cantor Arts Center for a conversation between artists and collaborators Miljohn Ruperto and Candice Lin, moderated by Jessica Riskin, Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral: Works by Miljohn Ruperto, on view at the Cantor from March 12 through September 14, 2026.
Through working collaboratively with artists, scholars, scientists, and technologists, Ruperto champions interdependence and cooperation—not isolated genius—as vital and innate to creativity and scholarship. Animal, Vegetable, nor Mineral features two works by Ruperto and Lin from their Putrefaction series (2024) which challenge traditional modes of classifying and representing the natural world.
Ruperto and Lin share interests in cycles of transformation, decomposition, rot, and animacy. Among their many intersecting points of inquiry are 16th century ceramicist and natural scientist Bernard Palissy, who proposed the early understanding of fossils being the result of mineral processes enacted on once living organisms; contemporary media theorist Esther Leslie and the idea of the digital as an expression of the mineral; and 19th century microbiologist Louis Pasteur and the history of bacteria, virology, and hygiene.
Their resulting artworks, utilizing photogrammetry and 3D printed in clay, unsettle what we think we know about nature. Ruperto and Lin will be joined in conversation with Professor Riskin, whose new book The Power of Life traces the invention of biology through early 19th century French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and asks: What is a living being?
All public programs at the Cantor Arts Center are always free! Space for this program is limited; advance registration is recommended. Those who have registered will have priority for seating.
Participant Bios
MiIjohn Ruperto’s (b. 1971, Manila, Philippines) distinctive multimedia practice considers the elusive nature of knowledge and strives to unsettle our knowledge of nature. Working across film, video, digital animation, performance, photography, and more, Ruperto interrogates the way we conceptualize, categorize, and represent nature to understand our place in the world, chronicle its history, and imagine its future. Ruperto received his M.F.A. from Yale University, and his B.A. in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley. Ruperto has exhibited work internationally at Foto Arsenal Wien, Vienna (2025); ICA LA, Los Angeles (2024); MEP, Paris (2024); Jakarta Biennale (2021); Singapore Biennale (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018, 2012); Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin (2018); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2017); Kadist, San Francisco (2017); Whitney Biennial (2014); among others. In 2019, he participated in the Acts of Life critical research residency at NTU CCA Singapore and MCAD Manila commissioned by the Goethe-lnstitut. His work is in the collections of Cantor Arts Center, MoMA NY, Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Kadist Art Foundation.
Candice Lin is an interdisciplinary artist who works with installation, drawing, video, and living materials and processes, such as mold, mushrooms, bacteria, fermentation, and stains. Her work deals with the politics of representation and issues of race, gender, and sexuality through histories of colonialism and diaspora. Lin has had recent solo exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Jameel Arts Center, Dubai; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Canal Projects, New York; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; and Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. Lin’s work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, Prospect.5 Triennial Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, and both the 13th and 14th Gwangju Biennales. She is the recipient of the 2024 Ruth Award, the 2023 Arnoldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize, a 2022 Gold Art Prize, and a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, among numerous other recognitions. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Walker Art Center. Lin lives and works in Los Angeles. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of California Los Angeles.
Jessica Riskin is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University where she teaches modern European history and the history of science. Her work examines the changing nature of scientific explanation, the relations of science, culture and politics, and the history of theories of life and mind. Her books include The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick (2016), which was awarded the 2021 Patrick Suppes Prize in the History of Science from the American Philosophical Society, and Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002), which received the American Historical Association's J. Russell Major prize for best book in French history. Her new book The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is forthcoming from Penguin Riverhead in spring 2026. She is a regular contributor to various publications including Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.