Artist Spotlight
- AJ
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
Natsai Audrey Chieza is a leader in the fashion biodesign space. She is a Zimbabwean/ British artist who designs with living organisms. In this discussion post, I will be talking specifically about her work with an organism known as Streptomyces coelicolor.
Coelicolor
S. coelicolor is a bacterium species that grows in the soil. It is known for its capacity to undergo a metabolic switch from primary to secondary metabolism during fermentation. When something is fermented, it is chemically broken down by bacterial fungi, the byproduct of this process is what we value. A perfect example of this is adding yeast to grapes to make wine.
During the fermentation of coelicolor the byproduct is actinorhodin. Actinorhodin has been used as an antibiotic but Chieza uses this byproduct as a way to dye textiles. She uses actinorhodin as a biological dye that can be “grown” onto her materials.
Actinorhodin creates a range of color from blue to pink and purple, depending on the acidity of its environment. This process allows Chieza to dye protein fibers without the use of any chemicals and with very little water usage.
Why is this important
The dying industry is the reason that the fashion industry is so harmful to the environment. Runoff from factories goes directly into waterways which is very harmful to the communities and living organisms living in and around these waterways.
Designing with sustainability in mind is something almost every designer today is striving for. Looking to biology and how indigenous communities have interacted with the living environment can lead the way to a sustainable fashion industry.
Designing with living organisms brings a larger variety and uniqueness to the fashion industry. Considering that every organism is different and can bring different properties to textiles.
However, we must be careful to not exploit these living organisms but instead, learn to work with them. By adopting a biocentric approach, we can learn to expand our morals to the nonhuman world. It is increasingly important that we learn to consider how our actions affect the living environment, especially when working with biomaterials.
Fermentation
Humans have designed with living things since the beginning of time and it is proven that we have used fermentation for antibiotics as early as 350 AD. Fermentation has played a large role in human development yet we almost take it for granted.
I never knew how long humans have been using fermentation and how important it is. Using it today can continue to revolutionize the fashion industry. In her Ted talk, when Chieza was talking about coelicolor, it shocked me how the color can “grow” onto the material, in her case silk.
Coelicolor makes it so that to die one T-shirt the bacteria needs only 200ml of water. This dying process emits little runoff compared to most of the dying processes used today. If we look back to methods used traditionally, we can mix those methods with the technology we have today and revolutionize the fashion industry.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Bio-design can benefit so much from engaging with indigenous knowledge systems. Starting simply by the way groups view the world and the respect they have for our living environment.
In order to work well with living materials, we must understand them, including how they eat, what temperatures they like, what acidity levels and more. Think about what you know about your best friend and how that can help you help them if they need advice or just someone to talk to. This is how close we need to be with the materials we work with in order to understand what makes them grow.
Combining these traditional ways of working with biomaterials like coliocolor with the technology we have today gives us the opportunity to scale up the production of these materials and make sustainability accessible to everyone.
Natsai Audrey Chieza shows that color can be produced through Living Materials rather than Synthetics, challenging modern fashion’s assumptions about the Reliance on Fossil Fuels.
Thank you for reading,
AJ :)
3/17/26
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