Harmless hybridity

Starting from the dramatic unveiling that is the Anthropocene in the narrative of planetary history, Harmless Hybridity denounces a fictional exodus, a narrative chapter resulting from the beginning of the era of human extinction. The Allochthonous Satellite emerges as a destination, as a planet that is simultaneously a metaphor taken as a model for common ways of representing the notion of place in nature.

In the works of the exhibition, Bernardo Ferreira compiled dozens of images captured, mostly with an iPhone, of common, nearby, small-sized elements, which become vicarious to the perception of their scale and in the deciphering of the final representation conferred upon them through digital manipulation, the expansion of scale, and their deformation. The sublimation of the images onto textile fabric presents itself as a typology that hybridizes the photographic medium, simultaneously with plastic operations of objectification that expand it. Thus, polished images, like reflections on surfaces, function in such a way as to satisfy the conventions of the desired artificial and social realism, not having been invented to duplicate a reality created by nearby conventionalisms.

Harmless Hybridity is the beginning of a fictional, solitary journey—composed of chromatic aberrations extracted from streetlights and Earth's own natural satellite, through a magnifying glass—to an allochthonous, amorphous, gaseous satellite, giving rise to a new science fiction scenario consisting of a triptych revealing three singular phases of the journey, where window-viewers, enzyme-shoes, and galactic views coexist in the same object of speculative reality.

Bernardo Ferreira (1997)

Born in Torres Vedras, currently lives and works in Lisbon. She graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon in 2019. She attended a short course in aesthetics coordinated by José Carlos Pereira at Appleton Square between 2017 and 2018. In 2019, she participated in the organization of the Soma Festival and was part of its exhibition (FBAUL); she collaborated with Constança Entrudo as a set designer (All that is solid melts into air). Since 2021, she has participated in several lectures and seminars organized by Maumaus, coordinated by Sjoerd van Tuinen, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Amanda Boetzkes, Lucia Pietroiusti, and Ashish Ghadiali.

Her work has been exhibited since 2018, with notable exhibitions including: Painting Finalists 2018.19 & 2019.20, National Society of Fine Arts (2021); Feeling Blue, Galeria Espaço Real (2019); SOMA Festival, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (2019); 1000056th Anniversary of Art, CAPC, Coimbra (2019).