Patricia Borges: Tropical papers
INSTINC 23/24 AIR Program Exhibition
2024 MAR 21 - 29 (Extended) | Wednesday - Friday ,1PM - 7PM. Saturday - Sunday, 1PM - 6PM.
39 Keppel Rd, #03-10 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065
OPENING RECEPTION | MAR 20 7 - 9PM
ARTIST TALK | MAR 23 2PM (At the Venue)
brief
TROPICAL PAPERS is a contemporary art exhibition by Brazilian visual artist and researcher, Patricia Borges. She explores the intersection between tropical climate and entropy in the poetics of image generation. The show, presented by INSTINC, will take place from March 21st to March 24th, 2024 at the artist-run space situated in Tanjong Pagar Distripark. This exhibition results from Patricia's practical research conducted in Singapore through her participation in a three-months residency of INSTINC’s 23/24 Artist-in-Residence Program, and marks a new beginning for INSTINC as it showcases the first Artist-in-Residence exhibition since its relocation.
Rio de Janeiro-based visual artist Patricia Borges anchors her practice in an experimental approach to historical photographic processes, yielding unexpected results. Borges often incorporates substances derived from everyday urban life into cyanotype chemistry; in this case, cosmetics and cleaning products available at a local pharmacy or market. Through this approach, she shows audiences how deeply the history of art is interconnected with those of land and industry, and how these connections are evident in life today.
In TROPICAL PAPERS, Borges treats various types of papers of the Southeast Asian provenance with light-sensitive chemicals diluted in salts and tap water. These papers react to environmental luminosity, humidity, and temperature, generating images from a series of unpredictabilities—a challenge for those living in the era of controlling algorithms. Alchemical reactions produce different shades of blue; the iron in the formula oxidises to both green and orange, depending on the hosting ecosystem. Moreover, the images will continue to change over time, as they have not been fully developed and fixed; ferric oxides will react to ambient ultraviolet light (a spectrum invisible to the human eye). The image is alive and gently reminds us of our perishable nature.
To reflect historically on the evolution of photography from an artisanal medium in the pre-industrial world to its post-internet digital version, where everything seems equally transitory, the artist also creates hybrid images using AI technology and interspecies relations. Liquid environments, underwater life forms, and aquatic and marine transformations influence the aesthetics of the works. The artist seeks to capture the disruptions in technology and engineering that the Anthropocene imposes on the planet. Amid poetic landscapes, environmental violence, fictions, realities, oceans and computing intersect.
BIO of patricia borges
PATRICIA BORGES (Brazil, 1974) Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in Architecture and Urban Planning from PUC-PR, she studied photography at ACP in Sydney-Australia, jewellery design at IED Istituto Europeo di Design, cinematography and screenplay at the International Film Academy AIC, fine arts at Parque Lage Visual Arts School. And is currently enrolled as a MA researcher in the Arts and Design department at PUC-RJ.
Awarded at the Florence and Rome biennales. Her work has been widely published and is part of relevant private collections and three museums. Starting in 2018, she began using photographic images as material to compose installations and three-dimensional art objects. Her recent production borders on rheology and uses organic photochemical processes to address the notions of the passage of time, transformation and the paradox of finitude.
Recent exhibitions include Le 228e Salon des Artistes Français, Grand Palais - Paris, Tokyo Art Fair (2018), Luxembourg Art Fair, Photo Israel (2019), Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition - Edinburgh (2019 and 2021), Festival de Tiradentes, Trieste Photo Days and Copenhagen Photo Festival (2020), A Quiet Scene at Los Angeles Music Center, with Brian Eno (2021), Ibere Camargo Foundation, Centro Cultural dos Correios RJ (2022), The Royal Photographic Society, UK (2022). Solar dos Abacaxis RJ, Blockchain Rio and ETH Milan (2023).
Website: https://www.patriciaborges.com/
Instagram: @patriciaborges_pb
