[…] passar, rebre, fer i desfer […]

[…] passar, rebre, fer i desfer […] is a proposition that explores touch and contact as forms of transmission. It redirects attention to the skin and its molecular reality, in an attempt to locate the contradictions and tensions within the notion of a “healthy life” as constructed by neoliberal narratives—narratives that organize bodies, care, and affects. This project revolves around the body, which here is both physically and conceptually dissolved into elemental fragments, rendering it vulnerable and subjected to the cultural processes and consumptive logic of late capitalism.

This dissolution of the body is cryptically referenced through images found on the gallery floor, which present a microbiological study of Keratolysis Punctata—a bacterial condition that causes superficial pits in the epidermis as a result of excessive sweating or hyperhidrosis.

The second component of the exhibition is a geometric structure with an aluminum finish, featuring a perforated pattern based on a drainage grate design. It rests on a padded PVC floor and acts as an anchor between the exhibition’s elements. This structure alludes to a humid, controlled space—such as a gym shower—where the enforcement of bodily discipline is enacted, and where microscopic processes silently erode, modify, and colonize the body. Visitors are invited to engage with the installation not only visually but also through touch, as they are required to remove their shoes and walk barefoot across the materials, evoking the tactile sensation of navigating such wet, sterile environments.

A third element comprises a series of hood-like vessels, metaphorically representing the body as a container—one in which biological and chemical processes take place, and where information is stored and transmitted. These hoods, crafted from technical sports fabric, have been solidified with resin and paraffin, and stained with methylene blue. This coloration references techniques used in microbiology: preparing biological tissue samples—often extracted by shaving the outer skin layer—to identify bacterial infections. The samples are embedded in paraffin or resin, sliced into thin layers, stained, and viewed under a microscope. Embedded within the hoods are additional materials such as boric acid—used to treat hyperhidrosis and inhibit microorganisms—and silica gel, known for moisture absorption. The pieces also contain biological remnants: hair, dead skin, and erosions caused by microbial activity in aquatic environments.

The project proposes a convergence of the biological, technological, and scientific in a hybrid, messy, and non-hierarchical way. Diverse materials coexist in this ecosystem, just as beings—human or not, visible or microscopic, living or inert—intermingle in a formless, uncritical mass shaped by evolutionary processes. Their shared purpose is survival and biological perpetuation.

M Reme Silvestre’s treatment of materials unites two key aspects: the signified materiality, where the materials point to processes beyond art—be they conceptual, physical, or chemical—and their practical applications; and figurative representation, where these materials construct objects and ideas that echo both familiar and alien elements of our daily existence.

This project is a layering of elements that liberates the body from its physical unity and dimensions. It presents microscopic imagery, alludes to bodily volume through absence (hoods), and references inhabited and transformative spaces (showers, gyms). It’s a deconstruction that uses shifts in scale—through magnification and technology—and cross-references between body and space to explore abstract forms of representation. It expands the concept of the body as a place of storage, transmission, and exchange of information—subject to, and shaped by, the control mechanisms and power structures of biocapitalism.

This is the body as regulated by market interests—malleable and reshaped to meet the escalating demands of productivity. A sanitized, high-performance ideal that necessitates the suppression and management of bodily functions through every available means: exercise, chemistry, surgery, and digital technologies.

[…] passar, rebre, fer i desfer […] (passing, receiving, doing, and undoing) is a work that operates across scales: physically—through references to the real-sized body and the physical presence of the artist or the viewer—versus microscopic fragments enlarged thousands of times by the microscope; and globally—showing how macroeconomic forces and market pressure (via advertising, public health policy, etc.) shape the individual and their body. Just as the body is embedded in and influenced by a microscopic world it hosts, it is equally shaped by the economic and ideological systems it inhabits.