Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible

A Two-Person Exhibit at THE BLANC, NY

Map of the Space

Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible, a two-person exhibition by Yuhanxiao Maggie Ma and Anna Ren. Framed around questions of power and vulnerability, the exhibition asks: If progress demands subjects for sacrifice, what separates a “guinea pig” from a person? Who decides which lives are expendable, or deemed eligible, and under what logic?
Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible is a multimedia exhibition that transforms visitors from observers into participants in a speculative world where the boundaries between human and animal, observer and observed, essential and inessential collapse.

Developed over two years, the exhibition combines Ma’s sculptures, prints, and other multimedia works with a central collaboration with Ren. At its heart is The Guinea Pig Eligibility Test, an interactive, projection-mapped installation that serves as the conceptual and spatial hinge of the show. This piece invites participants to complete a questionnaire modeled after medical forms, scored to reward disclosures of social vulnerability. Those deemed “eligible” have their facial biometric data transformed into guinea pig–human hybrids, projected into a shared digital farm.

Through a shift from sterile laboratory to pastoral scene, the exhibit reveals how systems of power soften their edges, making processes feel natural, even inevitable. “Guinea pigs don’t volunteer,” the artists explain. “They’re made eligible.”

Guinea Pigs: You May Be Eligible probes the ethics of medical testing, exposing how innovation, framed as progress, is entangled with profit, control, and decisions about whose lives can be risked.

1-8: Test Subjects: The Guinea Pigs Series

Yuhanxiao Ma, Test Subjects: The Guinea Pigs Series, 2025.
Guinea pig inflatables (80 x 54 x 50 in.), capsule inflatables (50 x 20 in.), test summary reports (36 x 48 in.), dimensions variable.

9. Like Us, Like Them
Yuhanxiao Ma, Like Us, Like Them, 2024.
Archival inkjet prints on backlit film, light boxes, 36 x 50 in.

10-12: The Guinea Pig Eligibility Test

Yuhanxiao Ma and Anna Ren, The Guinea Pig Eligibility Test, 2025.
Multimedia installation, dimensions variable. Custom-built real-time interactive software with camera, screen, and mouse; projection mapping; software-generated animation; participants’ responses and facial data; soil, grass seeds, and fence.
Credits: Conceptual framework, interactive design, and technical development by Ma; animation and technical development by Ren.