Politics of the Gaze 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.

Display Island

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Display Island, Reis focuses on the physical involvement of participants. The installation activates the viewers’ sensory systems and, in response to the excess of images dominating contemporary visual culture, proposes an alternative mode of engagement—one that operates not primarily through sight, but through bodily and auditory perception. The circular couch installation features a sound work delivered through sound showers shaped like lampshades. The piece takes the form of a spoken, spell-like manifesto. Through layered whispers and declarative voices, it invokes Medusa and the Odalisque as guardians of embodied difference, transforming a critique of patriarchy and the commodification of pleasure into a sensorial act of resistance and remembrance. Interwoven with the voice, a mystical noise is both heard and physically felt through transducer speakers embedded in the couch. In this way, Reis explores new forms of communication between humans and technology grounded in sensuality and intuition. Her works function as laboratories of embodied perception, in which the body is reclaimed as a full-fledged instrument for cognition and interaction with the world.

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.

"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.

Through the hole is the way "Out-of-This World"

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Through the hole is the way ‘Out-of-This-World’ is a site-specific interactive installation presented by media artists Patricia J. Reis in collaboration with Lukas Vincent Walcher, first created for the open-air segment of the experimental station Kulturdrogerie in Vienna and, later installed and adapted to the nature site-specificity of Flora Pondtemporary, Stiftsteiche in St. Florian, Austria.

Cutting the body