Pálpembrana is the catalog of the first solo exhibition by Alice dos Reis, which was on display at the Municipal Gallery of Boavista between august and september 2018. This publication brings together texts by curators Sara Antónia Matos and Pedro Faro, by the artist and Pedro Neves Marques.
“Alice dos Reis makes us aware that we exist in many places at the same time, and at different speeds simultaneously, exposing the properties of a specific contemporary condition deriving from the effects of a predominant or hegemonic use of virtual technology. Her work reveals that what we consider to be structural elements of the human condition – time, space and identity – have actually always been artificial, broken and disjointed constructions, manipulations of moral systems of power. Are we the ultimate source of meaning? Is dystopia cute? Are we dying?”
–Sara Antónia Matos e Pedro Faro
“Like the above, Alice’s film too is a fantastical short story for the age of mass extinction – which, I should not refrain to add, is a euphemism for genocide. We, human and nonhumans animals alike, are unavoidably living in the mess created by a stupid and overly-evolved ape.”
–Pedro Neves Marques
“Anatomically speaking, the eyelids are considered a membrane. The dictionary offers the following definition of ‘membrane’: ‘A thin sheet of tissue or layer of cells acting as a boundary, lining, or partition in an organism’. Some theists believe that only a thin veil, a membrane, separates the world of the living from that of the dead.”
–Alice dos Reis