Soft Synthetic: Opening Activation

*Please note: this event has now reached capacity. Additional tickets may become available if cancellations occur.

Join us to celebrate the opening of Soft Synthetic, a solo exhibition by speculative designer Lisa Meinesz. This exhibition is presented by Chin Chin's long-running GoGo Art Series for Melbourne Design Week 2026.

Soft Synthetic imagines a speculative ecosystem of organisms and the systems designed to sustain them. Spanning digital modelling and material fabrication, the project explores how design mediates care, control and biological adaptation in technologically supported futures.

Drawing from the logic of synthetic biology, the work envisions life not as something discovered, but as something stabilised, modified and maintained through designed infrastructures. These posthuman entities exist within support systems that extend care while simultaneously defining biological limits. The project asks how emerging bio-technologies reshape autonomy and whether optimisation and maintenance can ever be ethically neutral.

The opening activation will feature Soft Synthetic Performance, a site-responsive collaboration between Lisa Meinesz and MaggZ. Moving through suspended structures and synthetic organisms, the performance explores the relationship between body, support systems, and transformation. Through movement and interaction, the work briefly brings the exhibition’s speculative ecosystem to life.

A limited-edition cocktail, created in collaboration between Lisa Meinesz and Chin Chin’s beverage team, will accompany the exhibition. Responding to the material and conceptual themes of Soft Synthetic, the drink extends the work into a sensory, consumable form.

We acknowledge that this event takes place on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Curated by Caitlin Mullaly (Art Curator, GoGo Art Series)

Please note GoGo Bar is not wheelchair accessible.