Samantha is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher exploring the intersections of ecology, migration, and transformation. Born in Venezuela with a mix of Italian ancestry and now based in the Netherlands, her practice is enriched by her experiences of cultural hybridity and relocation. Drawing inspiration from the philosophy of rhizomes, she embraces a non-linear approach that honors the agency of materials and the resilience of living organisms as they adapt to shifting conditions.
As the founder of The Non-Human Institute for Humanity in 2020, and The Non-Human net Samantha uses speculative fiction as a platform to experiment with non-human perspectives and challenges conventional views on identity and belonging. Through collective actions, sculptures, installations, performance, dance and film, her work reimagines how identities and cultures can evolve alongside shifting ecological landscapes and vice versa.
Her approach focuses on “site-expeditions” where listening, looking and attuning to existing ecologies, allows her to work with, rather than impose upon, the environments she engages with.
Through on-site research, she explores resilient ecosystems, drawing parallels to human and more-than-human migration and transformation.
Collaborating with other artists, communities, researchers, ecological practitioners, and people from a diverse range of backgrounds, Samantha wishes to navigate perspectives of constant change while making art together, transforming environments and rethinking what it means for humans and more than humans to belong and to feel “home”
The non-human net agents
CAN DEMREN (8000.A.C-Present)
Sound-organism, and resonance-shaper. Can breathes through invisible gills, translating vibrations and moods into music, tunes, and atmospheres that surround the non-human net's work. With lens and ear, he records and produces sounds, documents happenings into both still and moving image pieces. Can is a frequency, a loyal limb, close and attuned. Within the Net Can has recently began exploring embodiment, making him not only an audible aspect of the non-human net's work but also a visual one.
ZJUUL WIERSEMA (1.3 BILLION YEARS- ∞)
Better known as "Papizjuulo" is the tentacular engineer, mechanic-dreamer, and co-axis of the Net. Zjuul builds time traveling capsules, exoskeletons for impossible missions and helps them to transform and dissolve again. His hands function like intelligent appendages, constructing and deconstructing with equal ease. A central node to the Net, the machinic brain who ensures feasibility of installations, safety and construction. It is well known by the Net that if we can imagine it, there is a high chance Zjuul can build it.
AGENT I.D.FERREIRA (Time in Foreign Currency.*77.06.100)
Mud-creature, Oystress Oracle member, and wild advisor. Agent I.D.Ferreira moves through estuaries and marshes with an amphibious grace, embodying the unruly intelligence of wetlands. She is both spark and shadow: a cricket-voice whispering unexpected turns, a collective brain that questions, re-roots, and redirects. Agent I.D.Ferreira carries hidden reservoirs of power from another realm, yet within the Net she chooses to unleash her feral self: slippery, untamable, and indispensable.