Artist Patricia Domínguez joins us to present the US premiere of her latest video work, Tres lunas más abajo (Three Moons Below) (2024), along with its “sister video” Matrix Vegetal (2022). Domínguez’s research combines artistic imagination with scientific investigations into such fields as ethnobotany and quantum physics to decode the world around us. Often incorporated into elaborate, shrine-like installations, her video works function as portals to the previously unseen potential of techno-spiritualism. Through her investigation of ancestral healing practices, the artist proposes a future in which organic systems—from plants to celestial formations—transform our relationship to mechanical technologies. Matrix Vegetal introduces an ecology that allows humans to log out of the everyday drudgery of digital capitalism. In turn, viewers are beckoned to enter the vegetal matrix, a molecular web of plant logic and energy intended to heal us from the inside out.
Tres lunas más abajo builds upon this proposition, expanding it to cosmic scale in a mesmerizing narrative about a woman and her robot-bird companion on a journey fueled by quantum mechanics. The interspecies duo visit ancient desert petroglyphs and astronomical observatories, consulting mythical beings and machines along the way. Born from Domínguez’s joint residency at CERN and the European Southern Observatory, the spiritual-fiction aesthetics of Tres lunas más abajo facilitate quantum leaps across time and space.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Domínguez and Abby Hermosilla, curatorial assistant in the departments of Media and Performance and Curatorial Affairs.
Matrix Vegetal. 2022. Chile/Peru. Directed by Patricia Domínguez. 21 min.
Tres lunas más abajo (Three Moons Below). 2024. Chile/Switzerland. Directed by Patricia Domínguez. 54 min.