Sophie Mei Birkin is a London based artist and a recent Sculpture and Contemporary Art graduate from the Slade School of Fine Art. Mei has a multimedia practice, which investigates psychophysical responses to materials. Mei’s current work centres on the phenomenon of ‘whale fall,’ when the carcass of a whale falls to the ocean floor, creating a deep-sea ecosystem. Whale fall typifies the life within death, the organisms and parasites that benefit from it, pointing to the generative potential in the transformation of matter. She is interested in slimy textures and biomorphic forms, something on the brink of formlessness, that tap into the human anxiety of the dissolution of the self into organic matter. She aims to create work that is situated on a threshold, between liquid and solid, attraction and repulsion, the imaginary and the real.