What´s for dinner?
(2022)
What’s for dinner? looks at dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins beyond the human body, tracing how these chemicals shape behaviour across species — from optimism in starlings and social bonding in orcas to aggression in honeybees and hibernation in brown bears. Drawing on scientific diagrams and behavioural studies, the exhibition gives visual form to these microscopic processes, unsettling the idea that emotions such as hope, attachment or anticipation belong exclusively to us.
Against a culture increasingly invested in managing mood, productivity and ‘wellness’, these biological mechanisms become a way of questioning how much control we actually exercise over how we feel. Moving between scientific research, humour and speculation, What’s for dinner? approaches the pursuit of feeling better as a recurring biological loop: anticipation, reward, satisfaction, decline — and the inevitable desire for whatever comes next.
O’ mice an’ men takes as its starting point the discovery of Mus musculus remains at Ponta de São Lourenço, Madeira, radiocarbon-dated to around 1030 AD — several centuries before the Portuguese settlement of the archipelago. Genetic similarities between Madeira’s house mice and populations from Northern Europe have prompted the hypothesis that mice may have reached the island aboard Viking vessels, although no archaeological evidence has confirmed a human presence. Their arrival nevertheless points to an early instance of human-mediated species introduction and its lasting impact on an isolated ecosystem.
From this uncertain history, the exhibition examines the entangled relationship between humans and mice: a species we transport, sustain and enable to thrive, while simultaneously attempting to exclude it from the spaces we inhabit. Drawing on traps, deterrents and the often absurd strategies devised to control rodents, the works approach the mouse as both unwanted intruder and persistent companion. O’ mice an’ men considers this ongoing struggle as one of unintended coexistence, in which attempts at control are continually undermined by the adaptability of the species they seek to contain.
Location
Balcony Gallery, Lisbon
Dates
2022
Materials
Mixed fabric, acrylic resin, wool, wood
Shown during PARALLEL VIENNA in 2019 with
