RHIZOMATIC WRITING IN SCULPTURAL TERMS
15 MAY — 15 JUNE 2024 I ISEG
PRIVATE VIEW: WEDNESDAY, 15 MAY, 6-8 PM
VENUE: ISEG, CONVENTO DAS INGLESINHAS, RUA DO QUELHAS, Nº 6
1200-781 LISBON, PORTUGAL (free admission)
Doctoral art inquiry including practice-related research with its various terminologies has evolved drastically in the last decade and continues to steer away from models borrowed from other fields of knowledge. Despite some universities offering courses culminating in artefacts that speak for themselves without a mandatory exegesis, written documentation is compulsory at the majority of academic institutions around the world. With post-qualitative research stemming from feelings, experiences and ideas, the voice of the artist-writer is still required to conform to the rigid format of the traditional dissertation structure, template, and development order.
Oftentimes, constructing a probe around (a) specific theorist(s), or arguing to answer pre-formulated questions or ‘problems’ demanded by the discourse of research maps the artistic process and limits the originality of the exploration. What does the written thesis look like for authors whose dissertation is essential to the research when hypotheses and theories are gradually constructed following unfolding lines of thought that generate new ideas? The exhibition provides a missing link between the development of artworks in the studio and the written text. It establishes a transition by presenting a visual interpretation of a research methodology in the arts.
Each sculpture in the exhibition claims its own experimental needs by exploring the passage from linear to rhizomatic writing based on philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1987) concept of a network of rhizomes connecting any point to another. The visual forms extract the horizontal underground plant stem known as rhizome overground to be seen. The sculptural interventions join biological anthropologist Ralph L. Holloway’s (1969) and anthropologist Tim Ingold’s (2013) respective understandings of the making process. The pre-planned structures match Holloway’s process clearly defined by a starting point and an endpoint.
In the upper sculpture – unlike solid materials – soft ribbons obey the gravitational force on the inclined plane and remain straight. In the lower larger sculpture, the installation of rebellious fabrics is intuitional and spontaneous. It follows Ingold’s thoughts on making as a ‘process of growth’ by answering to the flux and flows of the materials at hand. Strolling through the long inclined slopes echoes the gesture of scrolling down through the interminable pages of the thesis document represented by the tilted framed drawings.
The works were developed to respond to the bright space at ISEG. The sculptures channel the natural colour in which rhizomes thrive and extend the surrounding greenery and trees. Their abstracted green regulates spatial energy for circulating students, slowing the rush, and alleviating the stress of a long and intense academic journey. Furthermore, showing qualitative practice in a quantitative study-based space reinforces the long-time collaboration between art and economics campuses.
Rajaa Paixão
ABOUT RAJAA PAIXÃO (she/her)
Rajaa Paixão (b. 1980) is a Lebanese-Portuguese multidisciplinary artist, independent curator, and award-winning creative based in Lisbon. She is a doctoral candidate in Fine Arts/Sculpture (theory-practice) at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Lisbon (FBAUL), and a member of the Centre for Research and Studies in Fine Arts (CIEBA), Lisbon. Paixão holds a Master of Arts with Distinction in European Art Practice from Kingston School of Art, London (2014); a Master of Arts with Distinction in Communication and Visual Art from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) (2003); and a French Baccalaureate in French Literature and Philosophy.