Vladimir Kanic

Vladimir Kanic is a transdisciplinary artist whose living algae installations transform spectators’ breath into oxygen, creating participatory ecosystems that embody the possibilities of interspecies collaboration. Informed by his maritime heritage and free diving experience, Kanic’s practice uses breath as both material and method for creating art, accessing cultural, ancestral, and geological memories embedded within algae—Earth’s principal carbon sinks responsible for producing approximately 60% of the planet’s oxygen.

Kanic’s work envisions a symbiotic future, where living sculptures function as both ecological interventions and speculative gestures toward climate justice. Collaborating with algae as both artistic medium and carbon capture mechanism, his practice is grounded in ecofeminist methodologies and posthumanist inquiry, drawing on thinkers like Donna Haraway to cultivate responsibility that “feels for both the human and the non-human.”

Recipient of the Governor General’s Academic Medal, Kanic has received over ten sustainability and fine arts awards since 2023. His work has been exhibited internationally and featured on TEDx. In addition to his visual arts practice, Kanic is an award-winning filmmaker, an alum of the Locarno Film Academy and Berlinale Talents, with films showcased at over thirty Oscar-qualifying festivals. He is currently completing the Fine Arts graduate degree at York University.

See LACE (Living Algae Cyborg Ecosystem) as part of DXC25's Opening Night Exhibition on April 3.

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