Ana Santos


is an artist and researcher from Portugal. Currently living in Germany.
In her research practice, she focuses on the implications of prosthetic bodies in contemporary culture and society.
Her artistic practice is based on the exploration of the body as an interface, where the physical and digital realms are intertwined. Through her work, she seeks to explore the potential of the body as an interface for communication and interaction, as well as its potential for transformation.  Currently, she is interested in exploring the ways in which prosthetics can be used to create new forms of communication, interaction, and expression.

As an artist she has been interested in the aesthetic and performative experience of the intersections between body and technology, attending the anthropological turn of the post-digital society. Under this framework, she works in the areas of performance and audiovisual installation.



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Bodies of Experience

The installation is based on the prolonged accompaniment of a run. We talk about "muscular awareness"; here is reflected in the everyday practice of a body in search of adaptation to its environment and thereby gaining a kind of physical adjustment. This element of adjustment so present in the daily practice of an amputee with its dynamics with the prosthesis is experienced in its plasticity through a sound and visual composition that is triggered through the movement of the bodies. The accumulation and continuous overlapping of information as a repetitive sound element are reinterpreted as a training simulation.

Previously the project was developed and presented in a residence context at Cultivamos Cultura.

> access to Exercício II full video upon request
2022 Audiovisual Installation

Sound Claúdio Oliveira

Performance Paula Cristina

Acknowledgments
National Association of Amputees (ANAMP)

Founded by Calouste Gulbenkian

List of works 
.Exercício I
.Exercício II







Moscopólis:  ensaio de orientação civilizacional

In agreement with the very structure found within the laboratory, the artists noticed a whole architecture of spatial organization surrounding the fly colonies themselves - comparative to a production factory. They then realized that there were certain parallels to what we, as a society, generally recognized as aspects of civilization's organization [small spaces, in the form of pipettes, in which small "families" live, having as their primary condition reproduction instigated with the excess of resources through food, which, in its absence, turns into death. Moscópolis became an essay on the choice and reorientation of these flies.
We were interested in understanding what decisions the drosophila flies would make when faced with new environments, different partners, different foods, and the option to be alone or accompanied. From the local to the global, this project instigates us to think about the architectural orderings themselves, the geopolitical strategic reorientations, which are also thoughts of simulation to domestication, as a rationalization of food, in the right to territory or in the management of the ecology of space. The use of everyday materials proposes to think of its own excess, as well as and, in counterpoint, alters the logic of sophistication and scientific apparatus found in laboratories.


The project was developed within a scientific institution, which studied drosophila flies for a long period of time for specific reasons regarding the results they wanted.

︎there was no suffering implied

Various plastics, drosophila flies, iron, plastic tube, light



2022 Installation

Colaboration with Paulo Bernardino Bastos

Residency
Copraxis

Acknowledgments
Carlos Conde, Nelson Leça, Mariana Gonçalves, Sofia Silva, Augusta Monteiro, Margarida Gonçalves, Mariana Osswald

Hosted on i3s Porto and Ectopia Lisbon

Founded by Garantir Cultura Programme 

 




Construção Series


The works in the Construction Series are a reflection of the artist's experience of growing up with a father figure who was a construction worker. Through the use of found objects, scraps of materials, and tools, the artist creates a narrative of her relationship with her father and the construction industry. The works reflect the artist's attempt to bridge the gap between her own interests and the activities that were traditionally associated with her gender. The works also explore the idea of identity and how it is shaped by the environment and the people around us. By using objects that have a personal connection to the artist, the works create a narrative that is both personal and universal.

wood, light, iron, treadmill, textiles, sandpapers
2017 Installation

List of works

.3.14159265359

.Fuark!!Spasm!!Death!!

.I am Trojan

.Fúria






(estou-me) A lixar

To polish. To vanish. What remains? Nothing but dust. All memory is a no memory.

The video performance integrates the BodyConstruction Series.  Through the use of sandpaper to polish the furniture, the performer sands her own body in a ritualistic and repetitive gesture.
The image of the body is a sculptural projection of each other`s strengths and limits. Determined by the visions of the multiple reproductions of bodies, transparent and raw, delivered and subjected to worship, standardized by the systems that reproduce it.

>acess to full video upon request
 
2017 Video
Performance







Sinalizações Series

This Series explores graphically the meanings of common space signs and signage. Illuminated signs were produced for unconventional meanings or orders. In parallel, an installation was created where light and images in superposition are explored. 

The work is based on the idea of a sign as a tool for communication. It is a way to convey a message or an order, to inform, to warn, to guide, to direct, to control. The signs are a visual language, a code that is used to communicate a message.

acrylic, light, canvas, iron
2015 Installation

List of works

.CROSSdresser

.Pontos e referências de contenção e fuga










Pose e Devoção

This publication of graphic combinations between texts taken from the book "As novas cartas Portuguesas" by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa. Also, known as the three Maria`s, the collages and experiments sometimes from women`s magazines of the occasion and materials gave origin to graphic composition explorations of the book. The book written by these 3 women,  censored by the Portuguese dictatorship explores the role of women in Portuguese society, also touching on various intersecting aspects such as poverty, violence, gender equality, and sexual freedom.

wax, paper, photography, digitalization, hair, collage
2014 Publication

Artist book award with Posse & Devoção in 3rd Fall Salon of Latin America, Marta Traba Gallery. 
São Paulo, Brazil