Sensorial Mechanisms, 2025-2026

Artists Dorota Walentynowicz and Patrícia J. Reis create a shared visual and conceptual space shaped by a soft yet firm negotiation of the gaze. The exhibition brings together a constellation of objects, images, and surfaces that do not fully reveal themselves. Instead, they flicker between presence and concealment—between the desire to be seen and the right to refuse visibility. Embedded within these gestures is an inquiry into the digital gaze: mediated seeing, synthetic vision, machine desire. The artists ask whether, even for a brief moment, we can step back from the flood of images that saturates our daily lives and reflect on the normative frameworks of seeing and being seen—frameworks that reinforce prejudice, capitalism, and colonial narratives. They direct the audience’s attention toward what remains unseen, shifting the gaze away from spectacle and toward its backstage. In doing so, they expose mechanisms of power, recover what has been forgotten, and open the possibility of re-reading the history of visual media and technology from a feminist perspective. Reis and Walentynowicz present both collaborative and individual works. Situated at the intersection of art, science, and feminism, their practices reveal the pleasure and politics embedded in technology, while proposing new ways of seeing and perceiving. The exhibition unfolds through sensory engagement, inviting touch, affect, and embodied presence into the experience.