CICA Museum, Flexspace Section A
August 23 – 29, 2025
2025.8.23 – 29
If/Then [welcome]
The work draws on the conditional logic of programming — if/then — to reflect on the silent rules that shape how bodies move through social and institutional spaces. Welcome is rarely unconditional; it follows invisible algorithms of belonging and exclusion, aligning gestures with predetermined outcomes. What appears fluid is often sustained by a rigid structure, in which the social code operates through a predefined if/then, erasing the possibility of “it depends.”
In IF/THEN [welcome], material processes disrupt that certainty. Natural latex, fish collagen, shells and seeds resist algorithmic order. Against the restraint of the glass skin, they soften, melt, overflow, and drip under the weight of humidity and time. The system responds to its surroundings: the absence of natural light, the damp and stagnant air, the site’s isolation — and becomes a record of slow transformation. It offers an unstable image, without beginning or end, a presence that is always provisional.
What unfolds is not resolution but passage. A porous system in which contingency ceases to be an obstacle and becomes method, where transformation turns into form. Against the backdrop of surfaces polished to perfection, the work leans toward what dissolves, toward what refuses permanence. It does not ask to be decoded; it invites inhabitation, as an environment of shifting variables, an uncertain space. Always in flux.
PATRICIA BORGES (Brazil, 1974) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. She holds a degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from PUC-PR and has pursued further studies in photography at ACP in Sydney, Australia; jewellery design at IED — Istituto Europeo di Design; cinematography and screenwriting at the International Film Academy (AIC); and fine arts at the Parque Lage School of Visual Arts. She is currently a Master’s researcher in the Arts and Design department at PUC-RJ. Awarded at the Florence and Rome Biennials. Her work has been widely published and is included in significant private collections as well as in three museums. Since 2018, she has been using photographic images to create installations and three-dimensional objects. Her recent works explore the field of rheology, employing photochemical processes to address the me such as the passage of time, transformation, and the paradox of finitude. Recent exhibitions include: Le 228e Salon des Artistes Français, Grand Palais – Paris, Tokyo Art Fair (2018), Luxembourg Art Fair (2019), Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition – Edinburgh (2019 and 2021), Festival de Tiradentes, Trieste Photo Days and Copenhagen Photo Festival (2020), A Quiet Scene at the Los Angeles Music Center, alongside Brian Eno (2021), Ibere Camargo Foundation and Centro Cultural dos Correios RJ (2022). The Royal Photographic Society, UK and Solar dos Abacaxis RJ, Blockchain Rio and ETH Milan (2023). In 2024 she participated in the Instinc Art Residency in Singapore for three months, was part of the Cerveira Bienalle in Portugal, and took part in the Kina Video Art Festival at Casa Eva Klabin in Rio de Janeiro. In 2025 her work will be exhibited at Castra Leuca Gallery in Portugal, and she will attend the CEAC Residency in Xiamen, China, and CICA museum Residency in Seoul.
