Watch Now: Patricia Domínguez
b. 1984, Santiago, Chile; lives and works in Santiago
b. 1984, Santiago, Chile; lives and works in Santiago
Presenting with Cecilia Brunson Projects at Frieze London 2022 as part of Indra's Net, curated by Sandhini Poddar
For Chilean artist and educator, Patricia Domínguez, ethnobotany (the study of how people from certain cultures use indigenous plants) provides a springboard for her artistic practice. Trained in contemporary art as well as in traditional botanical illustration, Domínguez assembles futuristic totems in which our interconnections with plants are explored and given meaning.
For millennia, various Indigenous cultures, both in Pre-Colombian traditions, as well as elsewhere in the world, have gained access to healing and higher consciousness by intuiting man’s symbiotic relations with the non-human world. The artist has drawn from a residency at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), Switzerland, learning about quantum physics, coupled with a month-long recent stay with a plant healer in Peru, to produce the totem at Frieze London. Harnessing the power of a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach, Domínguez also runs an experimental platform called Studio Vegetalista (see www.studiovegetalista.com/info), which produces new research on ethnobotany through essays, publications and a school in Santiago.
About Indra's Net
Derived from ancient Buddhist and Hindu thought forms, Indra’s Net refers to an ethics of being, where an individual atom holds within it the structure of reality. Imagine a vast bejewelled net: at every nexus there is
a reflective orb that mirrors and refracts every other orb in its entirety. Each part is held within the whole in a system of dependent origination. All sentient life is interconnected; shifts to one atom subtly alter the rest.
Curated by Sandhini Poddar, this group presentation brings together leading international artists whose practices are informed by this prescient metaphor. In various media, we learn of ancestry, history, language, consciousness and futurity as being bound to the earth, which serves as a perennial witness through the arc of time.
In the video above, Domínguez shares her response to the question, 'What does interconnectedness mean to you?', an enquiry which is at the heart of the Indra's Net section.
Main image: Patricia Domínguez, installation consisting of wooden totems, projected and holographic video, and watercolour on paper paintings, 2022, Rooted Beings, Wellcome Collection, London, courtesy of the Artist and Cecilia Brunson Projects
