My practice is interested in the ontological repercussions of ‘digital corporeality,’ or bodily entanglement with digital technology. Central to my work is the “ghost net” (the abandoned fishing net), an oppositional structure that acts doubly as shelter and entrapment. Teetering between figuration and abstraction, I dissect and intertwine my body amongst digital and underwater motifs to meditate on the ghost net as a metaphor for the violence and refuge implicit in digital corporeality. The final works materialize a painted visual language that is distinctly digital. My ongoing research expands upon the implications of ‘digital corporeality’ after death, drawing on archival imagery from my late grandfather’s floppy disks and the volcanic landscape of his birthplace Sao Miguel, Portugal, to investigate the nature of our digitally mediated cross-dimensional relationship.

Olivia Aguiar