Woman: There's something called aura microbiota, believe it or not, so even when I pass by you, we are mixing microbes.

Ha!

I want to add a bit more.

As a refugee from Iraq growing up in Sweden, my work is always about the outsider.

I want to think about the interconnectedness of...different species.

Go clear.

[Inhales] That's beautiful.

Wow!

Gorgeous.

Very molecular, no?

Cellular.

I'm really obsessed with microbes, seeing microbes everywhere... and thinking about microbes as allies, as part of us.

We know now that our human bodies are made out of a ratio of one to one human cells and microbial cells, so this whole notion of what makes you human is really untenable.

I'm constantly porous with the microbiota around me.

So in this obsession of thinking about how the microbes can become a vehicle to talk about, you know, dismantling differences, I started looking at the surface that I usually paint on, which is linen.

♪ Linen is made out of flax.

♪ There is a particular microbe that makes its way into the stalk of the flax plant and separates the stalk from the fibers, and this is how we naturally get flax fibers.

♪ So we have a microbe that helps us and aids us in making flax fibers.

Straight forward... This is where I think art can contribute to us thinking more in terms of interconnectedness.

♪ The marbling for me is boundless.

♪ It really does look like you're looking through histological, biological tissue, yet at the same time, there is this macro vision in which you are looking at a larger cosmic universe.

♪