Dr Patrícia Domingues

Lecturer
Craft

Dr. Patrícia Domingues holds a Master of Arts from the Gemstone and Jewellery Design Department, University of Trier in Idar-Oberstein, Germany (2010) and a Doctorate in the arts from the University of Hasselt & PXL-MAD, School of Arts in Belgium (2022). Since 2009 she has participated in collective and solo exhibitions throughout Europe and abroad. Her work has been acquired for private and public collections such as: MUDE fashion and design museum in Lisbon, Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch in Amsterdam and the RISD Museum in Providence, United States. Domingue’s work has been recognised by international jewellery and craft awards: New Traditional Jewellery in Amsterdam (2012), Talente Award in Munich (2014), Mari Funaki Award for emerging artist in Australia (2014) and the Young Talent Prize of the European World Crafts Council in Belgium (2015). Currently, Domingues is a researcher and a Lecturer: BA(Hons) in Product Design & Craft at Manchester School of Art, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Manchester Metropolitan University.



A Fracturing Practice

My practice traces lines between geological phenomena and colonial history. With a background in jewellery and the craft of stone cutting, I am interested in understanding how materials and landscapes are cut, fractured, and broken up and how the fragmentation and reconstruction of the landscape is intimately connected with human skills, techniques, craft, and technologies. As I explore the fracturing conditions that emerge in materials and landscapes, I use this as both an analogy and a methodology—artistic and theoretical—to examine human development as a continuous flow of individuation and connections within a unified landscape-human continuum. Questioning the colonial aftermaths that perceive matter as a mere object, I instead explore the idea that matter is not inert but sensitive and embedded in aliveness. Human development is always a response to what is already latent within materials and environments themselves. Material culture is never just based on human achievements but on the interrelation of more-than-human environments and forces. In this sense, my research speculates that, by mediating micro and macro perceptions of the landscape while relating geological phenomena to the way humans handle materials in their own bare hands, the living world forms an interconnected web of different organisms, energies and knowledge which are continually in flux.


RESEARCH INTERESTS
New-materialism, animism, more-than-human affinities, feminism studies, post-colonialism, post-phenomenology, posthumanism, fragmentation, biogeology, techno-science in geology, digitality, databases as fragmentation, A.I. materiality, geological and media contingencies, craft, jewellery, objects, creative writings and participatory installations.