HELEN PYNOR ‘93% Human’ at the Western Plains Cultural Centre, Dubbo 

October 16, 2025

Helen Pynor’s solo exhibition ‘93% Human’ is currently on show at the Western Plains Cultural Centre in Dubbo from 28.09. – 24.11.24. Through an investigation of the DNA exchanged during exhalation and inhalation, the featured performance video highlights the intimacy of our unnoticed exchanges with human and non-human others, and ‘contamination’ as a necessary condition of being.

A performance video depicts artist Helen Pynor and bioinformatician Jimmy Breen collecting a shared breath sample. DNA extracted from this breath was found to comprise 93% human DNA, with the remaining 7% belonging to around 6,700 microbial species. Based on a sound score by composer Amanda Cole, classically trained singers sing and whisper the Latin names of hundreds of these species, brought into the gallery as an 8-channel sound work.

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Image caption: 93% Human, Helen Pynor, 2023. Single channel video projection, 8-channel sound, single channel video on screen, scientific glassware objects. Lead Collaborators: Amanda Cole, Composer; Associate Professor Jimmy Breen, Bioinformatician and Geneticist, Chief Data Scientist, Black Ochre Data Labs at Telethon Kids and The Australian National University. Photo: Helen Pynor. Image courtesy of the artist.