An isthmus is a land strip connecting two territories. A space which joins and separates two worlds. In this installation the exhibition space is the isthmus. The spectator run through a region that touches the boundaries of two defined spaces: the inner space of the objects and the outer space of the image. Here, in this gap, we can perceive the tactile quality of the air pulsating inside the suitcases, hidden and warm, and also we can imagine the ethereal movement of air flowing outside the window, fresh and luminous.



“In different ways, a narrative game permeates the works the rhythm and flow of which evokes a certain cinematic dimension. (…) This “fiction” is particularly present in Isthmus which conjugates, on one hand, motors that generate the respiratory movements of the suitcases and, on the other hand, the action of the photographic apparatus, in the photograph of clouds. Breath, universally associated with the life principle, evokes legendary attempt to breathe life into art. (…) The anthropomorphic, organic reference is undermined by un-naturalness and artifice – the idea of the organic subverted without, however, neglecting to evoke its symbolic universe. In Taoism, for instance, breath symbolizes the intermediary space between heaven and earth, a result of the first polarization and the breaking of the primitive tie – this “between” is the space of man’s insertion in the world. In Isthmus, within the junction of the hybrid nature of the suitcases and the image of the cloud, whose nature is considered confused and badly defined, the hyperbolic, surreal invocation thus looms over a possible restoration of this tie.” (Glória Ferreira)

“Also in Isthmus, the use of motors deactivates the instrumental sphere, bestowing an unexpected fate upon inanimate things. The relationship between the natural and the artificial gains another bias through the windows which afford a view of the sky yet, like frames, open up onto its image. Conjoined to the motor, it is the photograph which, according to Vilém Flusser, “transforms concepts into scenes”.21 And in the illusionist game it presents itself both as a possible natural view from a window and, by incorporating windows, a ‘representation’ of its own representation. In this “scene” the internal and external spaces lose their demarcations. Thus, an ambiguous context is created in which associations and encounters of various orders appear to seek ways through which to re-encounter the mysterious essence of things; a Magritte-like environment open to multiple articulations of the unconscious and to different levels of signification.” (G. F.)