Mirror Drumming

Looking towards the limits of the human or, to put it another way, of the humanity in that which is human, the references in João Biscainho’s work to silence and language, to knowledge and consciousness, to interpretation and relationship with others, as well as to the distortion of identity and subversion, at the opposite extreme, have been a constant without, however, being subjected to a separation or an opposition between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. In his work as an artist, but also as a curator, these references, often provocatively, refer to a fundamental investigation into the body and into art, where the ideas of progress, mechanisms of perception and inducement of mental states are of particular importance. Demonstrating how body and consciousness are inextricably linked to their social and technological context and how, since the dawn of the 20th century, technological acceleration has marked human evolution, we find in Biscainho’s work a constant and inescapable confrontation between internal and external space.