“Is Your System Optimized?” is the first solo show in Italy by Pauline Batista (1988), a Brazilian artist based in London. Batista’s practice questions the impulse to render information, bodies and ‘the quantified self’ transparent. The artist creates her own networks that the viewers are invited to decode, through installations encompassing elements of photography, sculpture and sound frequencies.
For this project at GALLLERIAPIU a new body of work and environment will be on view, inviting the audience to enter and become themselves part of the investigations at play. Inspired by her research into technologies such as CRISPR, which allows for direct genetic modification of embryos, as well as Pink Noise Frequency, Batista examines the space between technology, intimacy, and the medical, playing with ideas of enhancements using tactile objects such as waterballs and slime.
In the installation “Optimization Station”, bodies are enveloped both physically and aurally with pink noise and binaural tones as the viewer enters the void. We become the subjects surrounded by pink noise- inducing a deep state of focus and tranquillity, providing a soothing soundtrack to augment our frantic lives. The frequency effectively provides a fundamental strategy to facilitate our quest for peak human potential. Yet with in the gallery context,Batista seeks its potential for resistance via strategies of non-action. Through different aspects of the installation and a new series of photographic works, the artist dives into what it takes to be optimized and the future that we are headed towards.