ABOUT CRISTIAN
I often feel like a misfit, walking a path that relates many types of knowledge and experiences — denying the concept of exclusion and specialization pushed by modern society.
I was born curious and attracted by beauty, constantly exploring and wondering. I studied coding and became a graphic design apprentice in an advertising agency in Chile in 1996. In 1998, I switched to health science and obtained a university degree as a medical technologist and molecular biologist. In 2009 I earned a Ph.D. degree in Sciences, the biophysics and structure of ion channels.
Around the same time, I learned bagpipes and performed with a Celtic band in Temuco. I curated a music festival in Valdivia, and played the tunes of the Galician Gaita on the shores of the Valdivia River. I travelled back and forth between Chicago, Valdivia, and Valparaíso for three years and then established in Montreal in 2009, becoming a neuroscientist. While my science developed here, I learned and became a practitioner of stained glass art.
Eventually, my soul itched for the diversity of perspectives and the creative art process. In 2016 I founded The Convergence Initiative, an internationally awarded non-profit organization dedicated to advancing (neuro)science education and knowledge through art, promoting the interaction between them. Today, parallel to my scientific practice, I teach neuroscience to fine art students and science communication to scientists in Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts.
As a Science Communicator, I became interested in the crossover between science and art to explore the emotionality missed in scientific communication. In that context, I often act as curator of content, programs, and exhibitions for the Convergence Initiative and other organizations like Native Immigrant.
My art practice explores three topics: Nature, the Scientific Method, and Politics & Ethics.
Nature, in a classical depiction of aesthetics and beauty.
The Scientific Method and the interpretations of the natural phenomena produced by the subtractive digitalization of the analogic realm and the consequences to the approaching of truth using this method. The marvellous observations and questions revealed to us by tools that behave like new senses. And the ethical flaws from a process unaware of the scientist and focused on the production of knowledge.
Politics & Ethics, what it means to be an immigrant? What is racism in a society that develops a deep sense of responsibility but still fights its systemic existence? How can power and wisdom coexist when they are antagonists, and what does this mean for constructing a just society?
I use stained glass, stained glass painting, acrylic painting, digital and analogic illustration, art-based graphic design, digital and infrared photography, video, poetry, and social commentary.