Material Technologies on Patrícia J. Reis — Media & Installation Artist

Sensorial Mechanisms

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Artists Dorota Walentynowicz and Patrícia J. Reis create a shared visual and conceptual space shaped by a soft yet firm negotiation of the gaze. The exhibition brings together a constellation of objects, images, and surfaces that do not fully reveal themselves. Instead, they flicker between presence and concealment—between the desire to be seen and the right to refuse visibility. Embedded within these gestures is an inquiry into the digital gaze: mediated seeing, synthetic vision, machine desire. The artists ask whether, even for a brief moment, we can step back from the flood of images that saturates our daily lives and reflect on the normative frameworks of seeing and being seen—frameworks that reinforce prejudice, capitalism, and colonial narratives. They direct the audience’s attention toward what remains unseen, shifting the gaze away from spectacle and toward its backstage. In doing so, they expose mechanisms of power, recover what has been forgotten, and open the possibility of re-reading the history of visual media and technology from a feminist perspective.

Traces of Control

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Within their artistic research Patrícia J. Reis and Ruth Schnell explore the far-reaching societal and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence, as well as its technological influence on our lived environment. Their interactive mixed media installation expands the physical exhibition into a hybrid experiential space by interweaving virtual and physical layers and adding a digital dimension to real objects and artefacts.

Massage Chairs Love series

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The work Massage Chair series offers a tangible encounter between automation and perception, where the machine and the body share a material space, engage in a metaphoric dialogue of touch, each responding to the other’s inputs. Participants are invited to embody, relax, and sit comfortably in the specially adjustable chairs — upcycled massage chairs modified by the artist, to which she added comfortable upholstered details and a technical audiovisual–tactile interface.

What's love got to do with it?

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“A culture of domination is anti-love. It requires violence to sustain itself. To choose love is to go against the prevailing values of the culture. Many people feel unable to love either themselves or others because they do not know what love is.” Bell Hooks (1994)

CLAY PCB

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We challenge conventional PCB economies through feminist hacking lenses, prioritising sentient, low-impact, non-toxic, fair-traded, and recycled production methods.

It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also conflict minerals like tin, silver and gold. We investigated alternative hardware from locally sourced materials, so-called ethical hardware, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices for the benefit of both nature and humans. To decolonise technology we had to go beyond demystifying the black box, and dive deeper into understanding the basic elements these circuits and chips are made of. This journey took us virtually to many places, from gold mines in Indonesia to upcycle workshops in Cuba and e-waste landfills in Ghana.

Who has land to make a fire?

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The project by Patrícia J. Reis, Céline Struger and Kristin Weissenberger was presented at Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory (2023), Vienna, in the form of an exhibition. It revolved around the group’s collaborative and artistic process, using ceramics as their primary medium for exploration. The group’s goal was to create a shared artistic process that encouraged reflection and discussion among the artists involved. Through this project, the artists also wanted to shed light on the emancipation history of female artists and to explore the relationship between ceramics, hacking and other fields of art.

Low-tech paper pulp lab

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The participatory installation Low-tech paper pulp lab aims at bringing together people from different backgrounds and mind sets to collaborate with the artists in a commodity chain performance designed for recycling and upcycling paper collected from the streets of Havana.

"The Medusa v. The Odalisque"

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“The Medusa v. The Odalisque” is the artists’ ongoing research towards a critical reflection on the subject of visual pleasure in the age of digital entities. The exhibition consists of a collection of objects and images which engage the visitors in a spectacle of gazes.

The wishing machine project

Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The wishing machine project explores technomancy science fiction imaginary through the creation of a machine that can make one’s wishes become true. The open source apparatus is powered by orgone energy [Wilhelm Reich, 1930] known to be as a “universal life force” flowing within living bodies and nature. Referring to other black boxes typologies [as the photo camera by Vilém Flusser, 1983], this apparatus contains an input and an output plate. The wishes are symbolically represented and placed on the input plate while the wisher touches and gently rubs the output plate. The process is concluded when the orgone energy is sensorial perceived in the body.