Natural Order
Solo exhibition at Rhizome DC
Opening: April 23rd, 2017 | 17:00 hrs
Open April 23- May 30 2017
Rhizome DC, 6950 Maple St NW, Tacoma Park, Washington, DC
Natural Order is the first solo exhibition by Costa Rican / Mexican artist Paulina Velázquez Solís in Washington DC.The showis a view on what comes to be, arranges itself and finds new ways to connect and communicate. This exhibition is the result of taking notes and cues from personal experiences and ongoing curiosity into the biological world – which converge into variations, working with different media such as drawings, sound installation and sculpture.
Some artworks arose from collecting experiences of the human-mammal-body, particularly in the changes that take place during pregnancy, postpartum and the reproductive process in general. In other works, routine and the pass of time are represented through time-shaped soap and the diary like recording of fingerprints that fail to be consistent.
Shifting the view into a microscopic perspective, a sound installation made in collaboration with sound artist Travis Johns, creates a habitable net of cell-like units that responde to their environment in a sonic inspired synapsis.
List of works:
Diario Variable / Variable Diary, 2016-2017. Book. Finger ink on paper
This is Variable Diary was made with the curiosity to register the supposed changes on my fingerprints. Since I have memory I had a skin condition on my hands. After all kinds of medicine practices, diets, acupuncture, etc it is still there. The latest diagnosis dismissed the condition as a “woman’s problem” possibly because one of the biggest triggers for it is soap, used in home labor.
While this is not an uncommon problem, this condition can become a challenge as fingerprinting become more omnipresent for identification. For example during the immigration process I had to go through additional steps to record my prints and every time go through customs is the question will they register? And sometimes they don’t
This book is the periodical recording of my 10 fingerprints through 10 months from March 2016 to January 2017 as a way to find out if and how the dry marks that erase the actually finger print change over time.
Untitled, 2015, Found object, Soap
This soap was shaped by the frequent act of washing my hands during a period of the first year of life of my daughter.
Huellas/ Traces, 2017, digital drawing
This drawings are digital tracings of the marks on selected fingerprints of my right thumb taken from the Variable Diary. Emulating the scientific method with this graphic sample I can confirm that in fact the marks that affect my fingerprints change over time.
Estudios Amorfos II / Formless Studies II, 2016, drawing on wood panel
Estudios Amorfos II is a compliation of drawings that materlize secrets, memories, sensations and changes of the body during pregnancy, lactation and the postpartum period. Where the body becomes strange to itself complying to its mammalian programming.
Boca-estómago-estómago / Mouth-stomach-stomach, 2016, Installation, fabric sculpture
This piece was commissioned by curator Tamara Díaz Bringas, for the X Bienal Centroamericana “Todas las Vidas”, Costa Rica, August, 2016.
Boca-estómago-estomago is an imaginary diagram of the body, representing the minimal survival system that is prioritized during pregnancy.
Order Natural / Natural Order Paulina Velázquez Solís and Travis Johns, 2017
Sound Installation. 2 Eyecillator synthesizer electronics. 16 light sensitive and 3 light emitting sculptures
This piece comes as a continuation of an ongoing collaboration between Travis Johns and Paulina Velazquez that connects with different aspects of the organic realm. Orden Natural is a habitable sound installation based on cell-like shapes and behaviors where two main “brains” or cell centers process the perception of the other 16 light sensitive nodes. There is 3 other bacilus shaped, light emitting sculptures that affect the space, along with other light variation and the presence and moment of the public in the space, making it a symbiotic sound system.
The circuitry behind the installation is based on the Eyecillators made by John’s guitar pedal and synth company VauxFlores adapted
Additional piece showed in the “video hole”
Bulbs vs Chayotes, 2017, Video, 3:45 minutes
This is an edited video from a 2013 live animation and sound performance done in Cartago, Costa Rica with the project Multifungi
Paulina Velázquez Solís 