Laurence Gao graduated in 2024 with a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Biological Sciences and Art, with an additional major in Russian Studies from Carnegie Mellon University. He is an interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates how images function across scientific, cultural, and personal contexts, focusing on how they record, construct, and circulate meaning. Drawing on his background in biology and Russian studies, Laurence investigates how images operate as systems of meaning across scientific, cultural, and personal domains. His work investigates images not merely as representations, but as active instruments in the production of knowledge systems, ideological structures, and embodied identities. By engaging the visual languages of scientific figuration, Soviet and post-Soviet iconography, meme culture, and trans embodiment, his work examines how identity is formed through repetition, mimicry, and affect. Recurring motifs—such as medical illustrations, nationalist symbols, and internet images—manifest as both cultural residues and intimate self-portraits. Informed by his experience with medical transition, Laurence’s practice is grounded in an interest in biomedical aesthetics, bodily transformation, and the tension between personal and collective ways of seeing. Through meticulous analog renderings of ephemeral digital forms, his work explores how humor, alienation, and longing are encoded in shared visual languages. He has received support for his work in both scientific research and studio practice, and he aims to further integrate these fields as he pursues a career in biological research.