Patricia Domínguez

📍 Venue → GHMP

You find yourself in front of a complex altarpiece composed of herbs, amulets, screens, icons, corporative shirts, and a hologram. Someone is watching you. Two massive irises are scanning the nearest surroundings. These are Patricia’s eyes—the green evidence of a European past written in her genotype. The talismanic installation she has put together is a meeting place where different worlds clash and overlap in the circulation of healing. Touchpad technologies facilitate contact with the ghosts of your ancestors, and patterns from pre-Columbian geometric pottery mingle with vape smoke. By being exposed to it, one can exorcise the effects of neoliberalism on the body or take a deep dive into a psychedelic rabbit hole where colonial encounters are followed by visions of possible futures for humans and plants. The work has been developed as a part of an ongoing investigation of ethnobotany in South America, and it is accompanied by a publication prepared by the artist including texts from her journey across indigenous and extracted lands in Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.

Patricia Domínguez Claro (*1984) is an artist, educator, and defender of the living. Her studies include a master’s degree in studio art from Hunter College, New York (2013) and a Botanical Art & Natural Science Illustration Certificate from the New York Botanical Garden (2011). Her recent exhibitions include Screen Series, New Museum, New York (2022), Rooted Beings, Wellcome Collection, London (2022), Gwangju Biennale (2021), Transmediale, Berlin (2021), A Vegetal Encounter, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2021), How to tread lightly, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid (2020), Madre Drone, CentroCentro, Madrid (2020), Cosmic Tears, Yeh Art Gallery, New York (2020), Green Irises, Gasworks, London (2019), MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image, Montreal (2019), The trouble is staying, MeetFactory, Prague (2019), What is going to happen is not ‘the future’, but what we are going to do, ARCOMadrid (2018), Working for the Future Past, SEMA, Seoul (2018), and others. She recently contributed to the book Health (MIT Press/Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art, 2020) and to Season 1, Episode 3 of the platform  TBA21 on st_age  (2020). She was also the recipient of the SIMETRIA prize to participate in a residency at CERN in Switzerland (2021). She is currently director of the experimental ethnobotanical platform Studio Vegetalista.