In Claire Nichols’ artistic residency at Maus Hábitos - Espaço de Intervenção Cultural, the artist continues the development of her series entitled Variations, which she began in 2017. Her artistic praxis is based on the notion of abandoning the construction of a work as a finished and immutable product. Instead, in each exhibition she creates a web of relationships between found materials and objects, drawings, memories, sound and video, in order to present a three dimensional composition in a given space, in what can be called “constructed dispositions”. These compositions are the result of the variations obtained in each of the artist residencies she has undertaken, of the different geographical, social and cultural contexts, of the multiple collaborations, learnings, surprises and errors. Different layers that overlap, irregular in their thickness, transparency or opacity.

More important than the result is the process, which never relinquishes the relationship with the Other. The objects and materials are presented as sensitive triggers that bring us face to face with affects and percepts. And the performance, with the artist as its inhabitant, now in the company of musician Angelo Moustapha, invites us to enter into this “constructed disposition” and dialogue device.

-João Baeta