DIMENSIONAL BODIES: DRAWING ON AIR AND PAINTING ON PAPER            

In this series, the artist focuses on the drawing process and the gesture of imitating what she observes. She traces imaginary landscapes, looks at a digital image, and draws from her memories, nature, and identity.

These unique drawings are created on analog photographic paper and through a process called Chemigram. The artist performs this process while looking at the camera, her brush strokes connecting with the latent image. The developer then slowly reveals the drawing on the paper, a mesmerizing sight.

This artwork emerged from the art residency I participated in at Denver Digerati in Denver in May 2024.

Video performance, alternative photography
Two video projections
Variable dimensions
2024

DIMENSIONAL BODIES: DRAWING ON AIR AND PAINTING ON PAPER            

This artwork emerges from a need to bridge the analog, the digital, and the organic—specifically, the artist's body. It explores the possibility of becoming a cyborg by directly communicating with the machine through bodily movement. By integrating interactive technology, the artist merges alternative photographic media with performance, creating a dynamic interplay between physical presence and computational processes.
Exploring telepresence and interior selves, the work engages with the process of transmitting bodily movement into data and its subsequent rematerialization. Dimensional Bodies investigates the tensions between physical presence and virtual mediation, emphasizing the one-way nature of communication—where movement is captured, processed, and transformed without direct feedback.
Technically, the project employs a handmade CNC plotter that functions as a photo-developing machine. Using blob tracking in TouchDesigner, real-time hand movements are converted into XY coordinates, which are then sent to an Arduino-controlled mechanism that dispenses the photographic developer into a brush with a dripping system that pours the developer onto light-sensitive paper. Two stepper motors move this machine.
In the live performance, the artist's movements stem from memory—recollections of distant landscapes intertwined with the physical possibilities and impossibilities of the body. The body becomes a site of existential and political emergence, embodying what Latinx philosopher Mariana Ortega describes as the "being-between-worlds"—a multiplicitous selfhood shaped by the negotiation of social identities after migration to the U.S. This in-between self is fluid, continuously shaped by intersecting identities and lived experiences.
The artist has a physical relationship with technology, existing as a hybrid between the machine and the organism, extending the body in different ways and playing with the definition of what a human is in the 21st century.

Brenda Vega Dimensional Bodies, Drawing Air, Painting on Paper, Automated Version, 2024. Live Performance, Arduino, Touch Designer, CNC Plotter, Photographic Developer, Brush, Photographic Black and White Paper. Variable Dimensions 2024

THINKING OF THE SELF

I contemplate the different ways in which the self can manifest while pondering the significance of the gesture. As I navigate this path, I imprint my diverse forms onto various surfaces, seeking different versions of myself that can coexist without collapsing. The self can manifest in various forms, encompassing digital and material realms.

My project unfolds in a structured progression across three distinct dimensions. First, I am present, living and breathing. Then, I exist as an image akin to a holographic presence. Finally, I take on a more abstract image, blurring the boundaries of self. Picture me as if I were painting myself with chemicals upon a photographic surface, all the while projecting my image to the audience.

I aim to enact an action, serving as both participant and lead character, by merging technology – encompassing new media and analog photography. This installation represents my exploration of the photographic medium and its potential for expanding its conceptual boundaries. I employ a technique called Chemigram, an alternative process that does not require a camera. The essence of this process lies in the alteration of colors and the direct 'drawing' with chemicals onto photosensitive paper.

Video performance, alternative photography. Video projection, photographic paper, chemicals. Variable dimensions. 2023

THE DISAPPEARING SELF, SECOND ACT         

"The Disappearing Self, Second Act" is a multimedia installation comprised of video performance and alternative photography that come together to give time and existence a different meaning. The installation offers a particular interpretation of presence and absence, the mediation of the screen, and the transformation of the self every day when engaging with the internet, social media, and personal technology. The installation highlights recurring themes in Vega's work, like disappearance, which for the artist to disappear is not the act of vanishing but rather, living in the in-between cohabitating with technological devices that decide for us, that talk with us, and that integrate with contemporary human beings, causing disassociation and an avoidance of the current perception of time, that moves in a faster pace than before the ubiquity of the internet.


The series is an invitation to slow the rush of everyday interaction with hand-held technology. Time moves slower when experiencing these images. The artist invites the audience to partake in her self-portraits that blur the boundaries between painting and photography; her projected video performances will introduce an alternative world without the internet, leaving behind the rush to consume and experience the world with the mediation of a small screen. The artist offers an open-ended conversation with her audience in which a rather strange, dim-colored environment blends analog and digital points of view.

Video Performance Installation
Multimedia Installation: Video Performance and Alternative Photography
Variable Dimensions
2024

THE DISAPPEARING SELF, FIRST ACT       

This artwork exists, but at the same time, it is disappearing; it has a beginning and an end. It is an essential part of the performer’s self; it has merged with her, although it can act and sustain itself.

The artwork is a performance installation piece that deals with the disappearance of the self, but not in the sense of fading away; on the contrary, disappearing as inhabiting the “in-between.” Some vertical screens interpose themselves, revealing a figure that enters, the same one that repeats itself to become more prominent until the actual figure, the author, enters the screen and becomes part of the analog-digital performance—the ongoing battle of navigating screens to seek attention, information, entertainment, or nothing at all.

Video Performance Installation
Variable dimensions
2023