Cosmic Archaeology – Patricia Domínguez

Green Irises

Patricia Domínguez’s Green Irises brings together a multiscreen video installation and different objects installed into shapes that resemble altars. The centrepiece of the installation is the video Eyes of Plants (2019), in which Domínguez combines the cultural heritage of the indigenous people of South America and modern technology.  

The artist describes her piece as “cybernetics relicts”. The starting point of the video is the “jarro pato”—a pre-Colombian ceramic water pot which has a zoomorphic form and is depicted while crying—whose lines are then juxtaposed by the artist to the rest of the installation. As the images unfold, the vase is also transformed into a “crying drone” whose journey connects the exploited territories to their past civilizations. 

In the work, the artist seems to encode elements taken from the real and confronts them with digital reconstructions, to create new possible cosmologies and sustainable ways of living. Combining science fiction and ethnographic surrealism, Domínguez’s work adopts a wide array of multispecies myths, healing rituals and corporate wellness schemes to reflect on contemporary realities. 

The artist

Patricia Domínguez (b. 1984, Santiago, Chile) is an artist, educator, and defender of the living. She focuses on how neoliberalism perpetuates colonial practices of extraction and exploitation. She uses technology to connect with the living realm, envisioning possible futures for all creatures as well as the earth and the clouds.  

She has been the recipient of the SIMETRIA prize to participate in a residency at CERN, Switzerland  in 2021 and is currently director of the ethnobotanical platform Studio Vegetalista. 

Photo: Ville Mäkilä, Museum Centre of Turku.