NO CREO EN LAS BRUJAS  - Mixed Media (2020) Ed.1

Paraffin, soot, human hair, spices, tobacco, natural stones, needles, eyelashes, wood, plants, gold, bone and glass

33 x 33 x 3.3cm / 13 x 13 x 1.3in each


For NO CREO EN LAS BRUJAS (I Don’t Believe in Witches) I experiment with organic materials: paraffin, human hair, spices and plants. To them I add gold, glass and needles. I use the kitchen stove to bake my work. I am attracted by the matter transformation of state, by the way the ensemble changes from solid to liquid to solid during the casting process. How the colours change, and some elements resist to heat. It has something of magic or alchemical. But at the same time, a latency that resembles analog photography, where the image emerges from the invisible.

Things are not built as such, they are negative forms, a reverse process of image construction. I move the hot elements inside the mold and I cannot see through the volume, because the paraffin becomes opaque as it solidifies; the final image will only be visible upon unmolding it the next day. What brings me to the photographic development time once more.

My vocabulary during the pandemic period was built within the inner space. Working and living in the same environment, I go through my own drawers, revisiting and incorporating things that I have kept or set aside - mentally or physically. These works are extensions of the female, the domestic. 

Biomorphic self-portraits, but above all a reflection on the place and space in which the mind chose to inhabit.

                                                                               Patricia Borges






No Creo En Las Brujas (I don’t believe in witches)

MEDEA - Photo Object (2019)

Photographic prints on tracing paper, glass, metal and natural hair (Ed. 1.)

7 x 7 x 126 cm / 3 x 3 x 49 in

For MEDEA I photographed the bars, doors and gates that hold us at home. More than the official discourse of protecting us from the evil that lives outside, these culturally accepted elements often confine us without choice in the domestic environment as if it were
always safe.

The photographs were printed on delicate tracing paper and wrapped around a glass tube, from which the female hair comes. The interior that no one sees. A metal clamp that has only fit for closure, holds the assembly, compresses and tests the fragility of the glass that resists in the crumb.

                                                                               Patricia Borges

Medea

PERO QUE LAS HAY, LAS HAY (But there are)
Mixed Media (2020) Ed.1
paraffin, glass, gold, soot, spices, human hair, brass, pills, eyelashes
Aprox. 8x10x16cm / 3x4x6.5in each

In PERO QUE LAS HAY, LAS HAY (But There Are) I continue the previous series and melt the works NO CREO EN LAS BRUJAS (I Don’t Believe in Witches). Once again attracted by the alchemical processes of transformation of the physical state and color changes of the materials. The elements are reorganised when I bake the work.

I have little control over the amalgam of paraffin, hair, spices, glass, stones and metals that, on cooling, insist on leaving the position I moulded them in the heat. Beings that cohabit in broths and barnacles, that reveal themselves only in parts through the opacity of the volume.

The shape emerges here in the same way that the image became visible in LAS BRUJAS, interweaving intention and memory.

In the programmed disappearance of everything, each object will probably become something else in a new melting cycle.
                               

Pero que las hay, las hay. (But there are.)

NO CREO EN LAS BRUJAS (2020) Mixed Media (Ed.1)  
Paraffin, soot, human hair, spices, tobacco, natural stones, needles, eyelashes, wood, plants, gold, bone and glass
33x33x3.3cm / 13x13x1.3in each

For NO CREO EN LAS BRUJAS (I Don’t Believe in Witches) I experiment with organic materials: paraffin, human hair, spices and plants. To them I add gold, glass and needles. I use the kitchen stove to bake my work. I am attracted by the matter transformation of state, by the way the ensemble changes from solid to liquid to solid during the casting process. How the colours change, and some elements resist to heat. It has something of magic or alchemical. But at the same time, a latency that resembles analog photography, where the image emerges from the invisible.

Things are not built as such, they are negative forms, a reverse process of image construction. I move the hot elements inside the mold and I cannot see through the volume, because the paraffin becomes opaque as it solidifies; the final image will only be visible upon unmolding it the next day. What brings me to the photographic development time once more.

My vocabulary during the pandemic period was built within the inner space. Working and living in the same environment, I go through my own drawers, revisiting and incorporating things that I have kept or set aside - mentally or physically. These works are extensions of the female, the domestic. Biomorphic self-portraits, but above all a reflection on the place and space in which the mind chose to inhabit.
                                                                               Patricia Borges


No Creo En Las Brujas. (I don’t believe in witches)

Stoic (2019)
Photographic prints on tracing paper, glass, wood and eyelashes
41 x 4 x 5.5 cm (16 x 1.8 x 2 inches)



My works result from an attempt to understand the world we live in and to say something about it. I believe the artist is someone unsatisfied with the world as it exists, for that reason we create our own world and bring it to the public.

Many of my photographic essays will contemplate a feminine narrative. Our bodies and our feelings are common themes. Poetic fictions.

I have always seen myself as an image maker. My work evolves from pure photography to objects and movies, out of necessity. Lately I have been focused on exploring the plane/surface of printed photography rather than the colours, light or shapes depicted on them. I want to explore the materiality of photographs with my work, its variations, and the impact on how we perceive a specific image. I speak of a three-dimensional experience that goes beyond what is initially represented. To establish spatial relationships with printed images.

For me, building the perfect photographic image and displaying it on the wall is no longer sufficient. But using this image or fractions of it to build something else, interact,  encourage the viewer to move and think beyond what is being shown, really interests me now.

On STOIC I have photographed deteriorating architectural details from printed books and magazines, and reprinted them on tracing paper formerly used for architectural plans. I applied the prints to glass cutouts between eyelashes that were then arranged as a multi storey building. As it is always uncomfortable to look at decay. Painting runs down photographed buildings like mascara in the rain. Although created architecture will remain undaunted and sober in the wall, every sharp glass blade is about to fall.

STOIC

For the last year I have worked with cyanotype chemicals. I started my experiments with traditional 19th century photographic technique, and developed my own way of producing impermanent images as I alter the traditional chemical composition to make contact prints without negatives.
But in order to produce those images I need to expose the sensitised paper under direct sunlight.
With urban confinement, my project is paused. And finished works can only be viewed online.
Prints have not been washed and fixed in the traditional way, so they will keep reacting to ambient uv light, fade away and eventually disappear.
I was supposed to show this work last month, but the venue cancelled. Instead I made a "virtual presentation" for the public.
It would be great to have it published (before images vanish)
Thank you!

More images and project statement: http://www.patriciaborges.com/cyano-patricia-borges


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Patricia Borges