Expanding the notions of mystery

For more than a decade, artist Patricia Domínguez (Chile) has been investigating the interspecies relationships we establish on Earth and how those connections are affected by the digital age and climate change. Drawing inspiration from myths, rituals, and healing traditions, she creates shrine-like imagery derived from a visual vocabulary that spans plant life, the digital world, and mass-market goods.

Her investigation took another step in 2021, when she spent a few weeks at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, for the Simetría residency, in which she took part alongside Geneva-based artist Chloé Delarue. The programme was organised by Arts at CERN and Corporación Chilena de Video, co-hosted by CERN and ALMA, the Southern Astronomical Observatories in Chile, with a view to foster exchanges between artists and scientists in Switzerland and Chile (the dual residency, now known as Connect Chile, has evolved into the Connect collaboration between Arts at CERN and Pro Helvetia).

‘The residency meant travelling to the furthest possible place, both in physical and conceptual terms. These days provoked a deconstruction and a reformulation of my notions of reality; they were a portal,’ the artist stated at the time. The experience, as she recalls, led her to rethink her vocabulary around the invisible and reflect on organic technologies, what we can find in our bodies, since we’re all made up of energy.

At CERN, Patricia also started working on ‘Tres Lunas Más Abajo’ (Three Moons Below), a speculative, ancestral, and futuristic video that explores mysticism and ritualism while navigating fundamental science and cutting-edge technologies. It reflects on the interconnectedness of spiritual and quantum realms, in search of re-coding our perception of reality.

In the film, a woman, guided by a robot bird, embraces different machines and technologies to acquire their capabilities; they are artefacts of connection to the cosmos, to the Earth and to the irreducible reality. Shot on ALMA’s radio telescopes, the La Silla’s telescope and CERN’s neutrino detector, the video should premiere on the second half of 2024.

Patricia’s connection to this research, however, did not end with her Simetría residency; it later unfolded into a new project. The idea now was to delve into the experiments at the Larger Particle Collider in Geneva to produce a publication and a series of watercolour paintings based on the organic decoding of invisible information.

For that, she headed back to Geneva, in January 2024, for a research trip. Over the course of two weeks, she got access to the laboratory’s experiments, where she documented everything through video and analogue photography; resumed shooting her ‘Tres Lunas Más Abajo’ film; attended CERN’s Art and Science Summit ‘Unveiling the Universe’, joining the panel ‘Scientific Imaginations’; and interviewed scientists for an upcoming publication. ‘The dynamics of the interviews covered the whole spectrum of the process that goes on around the colliders. From the more technical to the more speculative aspects,’ the artist explained.

‘It was an immersion into the invisible and infinite world of the physical aspect of the fundamental particles. It entailed expanding my notions of the mystery, precision and subtlety needed to study these particles that make up all that exists. I was deeply impressed by the level of abstraction, imagination, speculation, and open-minded thinking that scientists live with, while working with the largest, most precise, and advanced machines in existence today. The residency in 2021 and the research trip in 2024 were both a gateway, a before and after. I returned full of emptiness and curiosity.’