Cosmic Solipsism

(Elán Vital, Angel, Holy Slit, The Way of the Water,  Gemini, Quadrantis 1, Quadrantis 2, Quadrantis 3)

2022-23  
Acrylic, spray paint, imitation silver leaf, plaster on canvas; crash matt; light and sound.    

The starry night reminds us of the different speeds, ages, and scales with which we live on this planet – and outside it. That which allows us to re-update our cosmological here and now, every day. A valuable tool for fine-tuning. The room’s ceiling, which corresponds to that of the building, and is, therefore, its highest point, is the core of this environment, which is intended to be contemplative and multi-sensorial.  

While designing its own universe, the installation refers to and employs a plurality of entities as structuring devices. Whereas the arrangement of the paintings evokes the night sky, with the paintings’ subject drawing influence from cosmic reincarnation, the sound score traces its inspiration from the previous lives of the building, all bound by an interplay of light and darkness signalling the dis-continuity of the cosmos.  

You are invited to embark on a simple experience: to lie down on a mattress and abandon one’s body.     

Commissioned by: Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.   

Supported by: Västra Götalands Regionen; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation  

Electric Dream

2023  
Performance; (25 mins)   

 Electric Dream is an aural voyage woven live with a visual ride. The sequence of entangled images explores formal and structural resemblances between distant objects and realities challenging scales and dimensions in a baffling, dreamlike, narrative.  

 Joana da Conceição composes and performs live on a hardware electronics system she has assembled and mastered through time. The visual artist and musician is part of the legendary European underground group Tropa Macaca, and has been celebrated for her singular ritualistic craft, textural phrasing style and mediumistic beats. All of which she creates live without a net – confident on the mystery of the music language she follows nurturing with thought and practice.      

Supported by: Västra Götalands Regionen; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation  

Joana da Conceição has a practice rooted in painting and music. She has been known to create contemplative and multisensory environments, spaces for tuning oneself, that grow out of the artist’s urgency to confront and explore the contradictions that, in the context of Western ontology, animate the post-humanist turn.   

 Conceição has recently exhibited or performed at: Serralves em Festa; VOODOOHOP; Stadslimiet; Fylkingen; Salon des Amateurs; Cafe Oto; BoCA Bienal; Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; MK Gallery; Galeria Municipal do Porto; and Walk&Talk Festival.  

Röda Sten Konsthall