Untitled
2019

170m of knitted zinc plated (1,5mm) steel rope; HD video, color, sound, 59′ 43″, loop; HD video, color, sound, 3′ 08″, loop
Variable dimensions

The artist knits 170m of steel cable for three months. Then, the performative object is squeezed fiercely against her body, conditioning it, and she walks down the street.
Posteriorly, the artist eats a fennel.

In Untitled, the artist employs a single continuous shot. The person operating the camera follows the artist according to her instructions. She leaves her home and walks into the street with no apparent destination, wrapped in the knitted steel cable she had produced over the previous three months, pulled tightly against her body under the greatest tension she could achieve. Just as the steel cable forms a continuous line, structured through the repetition of the same gestures (the bodily movement of knitting), the artist's route also traces a continuous line, running parallel to that of the camera operator, whose movement is subordinated to hers while simultaneously asserting control over her through the act of recording. The artist's movements are constrained by the object she has constructed herself. Nothing responds “naturally”; everything exists in dependence upon everything else, establishing reciprocal relationships of influence and limitation.

Upon returning home, the artist eats a fennel bulb, a symbol of spiritual rejuvenation. According to Pliny, fennel possessed the power to improve eyesight and, more significantly, it was by eating it that snakes acquired the ability to renew themselves periodically.

Iron, the principal constituent of steel (together with carbon), is commonly understood as a symbol of strength, hardness, obstinacy, excessive rigidity, and inflexibility, qualities that the physical properties of the metal only partially substantiate. It symbolizes a harsh, dark, impure, even diabolical force.

The projects Untitled and Follow My Back were installed within the same space: a small, intimate, yet claustrophobic room, whose walls were lined with a pattern of iron rods, aligned, regimented, and directed towards the viewer.

Exhibited at
2019Follow my back / solo installationEspaços Novos of Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, PT