MATRIZES

The term matrix, in its strictest sense, denotes origin and foundation — yet it also carries a wide range of meanings, spanning technical, symbolic, and cultural dimensions.

In this context, the matrix serves as both a conceptual foundation and a central working structure — a point of departure and a site of accumulation, where the image takes shape, undergoes transformation, and gathers material density. At the core lies the matrix — a surface of making and storing — where printmaking, particularly through collagraphy and drypoint, becomes a gesture of interpretation. More than a tool for reproduction, the matrix is approached here as an autonomous structure, carrying its own archaeology: fragments, layers, and residues that suggest a stratified temporality.

The term "matrix" opens itself to multiple readings: technical, conceptual, and poetic. As the surface from which the printed image originates, it evokes notions of genesis and structure. In this expanded context, the term gestures toward legacy — material, historical, and cultural — and aligns itself with the ruin as a residual and revealing form. It is within this intersection — between construction and erosion, permanence and loss — that the conceptual axis of this work emerges.

The exhibition stems from a material and visual investigation into the British industrial legacy in the Alentejo, with particular focus on the nineteenth century. Abandoned mines, disused railway lines, and timeworn infrastructures are not represented in a documentary manner but reconfigured through the matrix. Here, the matrix acts as a site of translation — not mimetic, but affective and critically engaged with these transformed remains.

The resulting prints are not direct reproductions of the matrix but partial records of a process. As monotypes, they mark singular moments within a broader trajectory and assert their own presence as autonomous objects, irreducible to their point of origin.