Amy Karle is an American artistwhose bioart practice uses the human body as a working material, combining stem cells, 3D-printed scaffolds and biotechnology,with digital tools including artificial intelligence and blockchain.She examines how technology and biotechnology impact the human body, creating sculptures and installations that grow, change or respond over time.,,
In Regenerative Reliquary, 2016, Karle 3D printed a hand-shaped scaffold from biodegradable hydrogel and seeded it with human mesenchymal stem cells from an adult donor inside a bioreactor, intending the cells to grow into tissue and mineralize into bone along the scaffold.,Shown at Centre Pompidou's 2019 exhibition “La Fabrique du Vivant”, the glowing sculpturetook the form of a skeletal hand suspended in a bioreactor, developing gradually over the course of the show.,
Karle also made The Heart of Evolution?, a 3D-printed heart form that pulses biomechanically like a pacemaker. She has said bio artists are positioned to guide humanity through “the philosophical questions, the ethical questions [that] are a lot harder than the technological problems”. Karle has called the University of Western Australia's SymbioticA laboratory, the world's first laboratory dedicated to bio art, an instrumental pioneer of the field.
Through a residency with the Goethe-Institut's Studio Quantum program, she made Entangled Horizons, 2023-2024, a multimedia installation of prints and video shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin during Berlin Science Week, with a version also sent into orbit and to the lunar surface.,She has spoken about her practice in a talk hosted by the NFT platform SuperRareand was recognized as one of BBC's 100 Women.
