Patricia Domínguez, Madre Drone (still), 2019-20
Patricia Domínguez's film Madre Drone (2019-20) features in New Humans: Memories of the Future, the New Museum’s inaugural exhibition in their expanded building on the Bowery in New York.
"The artist, educator, and experimental ethnobotanist Patricia Dominguez creates otherworldly video works and sculptural environments that draw from an expansive inventory of visual symbols. These range from plant life and healing rituals to cheap mass-market goods, internet downloads, and corporate wellness schemes. Staged in natural and shrine-like settings, often illuminated by the fluorescent glow of LED lights, Dominguez's time-based pieces reflect the artist's research on the long mark of colonization in Chile and her own family history, entangled across ecological, spiritual, and therapeutic realms.
Madre Drone (2019-20) was made during a period of crisis, encompassing decades of political, economic, and environmental catastrophes in South America, including: the burning of Bolivia's Chiquitania dry forests and Amazon rainforests; mass uprisings in Santiago, Chile, over low wages and the high cost of living; and eruptions of police brutality. Created while Dominguez was volunteering at an improvised animal shelter that cared for wildlife burned or maimed in the forest fires, the dreamlike video Madre Drone draws a line between environmental disaster and human political crisis. In it, imagery of a toucan blinded by flames merges with laser-clad robots, cosmic serpents, spy drones, and footage of protests in Santiago, during which hundreds suffered eye trauma from hardened bullets and tear gas fired by Chilean security forces. Positioned in a violent, hyper-commercialized, over-extracted world, Dominguez's videos, nonetheless, propose a poetic vision of contemporary life as deeply connected to the earth." –Madeline Weisburg
New Humans: Memories of the Future
The New Museum, New York, NY
21 March 2026 - Ongoing
