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2025seivas e outros mitosEDP New Artists Award solo project at maat, lisboa
curated by Catarina Rosendo, Luís Silva and Sérgio Mah



Inês Brites (1992, Coimbra) is a Portuguess artist who lives and works in Lisbon. She hast diploma in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon and also studied at KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium Between 2019 and 2022 (sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation), she developed the work "ciclo de Amizades" [cycle of friendships] in her studio, where she presented works made in collaboration with other artists. At the root of this set of exhibitions was a questioning of the individualism so inherent in visual arts practices, and an emphasis on collaborative artistic processes, exploring notions such as sharing, emotional connection, and an openness to vulnerability and chance. In Brites work, attention to objects, to the place they occupy in our lives, and to the ways we relate to them - a kind of reflection of our relationships with others and with nature —takes on a central role.

Over the years, the artist gleaned and collected unwanted objects, removed from their original function, found in flea markets, online shops, and donated by friends. In recent years, she has worked extensively with malleable materials such as silicone, paraffin, and epoxy resin. These are the vehicles through which she explores multiple ways of moulding objects, in a sculptural approach that is both laboratorial and handcrafted, and that incorporates a pictorial intention that investigates the behaviour and effects of different pigments.

Through this process, in which trial and error play a significant role, and which often leads to unexpected yet willingly embraced results, the artist replicates a range of everyday, commonplace objects, giving rise to new objects whose familiar forms are transformed by the unexpected colours and materiality, whether translucent or opaque, rigid or flexible, smooth or viscous, and adding an appealingly tactile dimension to their visual appearance.

The works created for the 15th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award take this haptic dimension even further, adding a new layer of sensory appeal through the use of small electronic mechanisms, never used before by the artist, which introduce movement, light, and heat. The result is a set of works that retain clear references to intimacy and self-care, each independent from the other, yet forming part of a shared organic system and combining mouldings of familiar objects with natural elements of plant and animal origin, all of which are subject to a process of resignification and imbued with new properties. Water and electricity animate these pieces from within, making them vibrate, breathe, pulse, drip, sweat, and exhale; turning them into singular, living presences full of humour.

The illusory, playful character of these works evokes a choreography of past gestures, the ghostly presence of someone who left a tap running, made tea, or forgot to close an imaginary window through which the breeze comes in. These micro-events coexist with the serene radicalism of a tree trunk that pulses with light in rhythm with a breath, a bathtub that is home to a dewy branch, a basin in which feathers have sprouted, and an impossible, hanging, inert garden. These works retain the memory of the original functions of the objects they contain, while also opening themselves up to new ontological possibilities about what is plausible within our reality and the world we inhabit. Animated by a vital breath, these pieces are simultaneously amusing and unsettling - hybrid beings that occupy a space of tension between the artificial and the natural, and which could even be specimens of a new composite nature that is forming from the debris left behind by human activities.

10.04.25 — 08.09.25
photos bruno lopes
text catarina rosendo