There is a thin, sticky layer that covers the surface of the retina, like a photographic emulsion or a nictitating membrane, and which more or less inconsistently dresses and undresses cities. Sometimes it’s possible to unveil it, like an adhesive that peels off and slips away; at other times, no matter how many layers we try to remove, we’re left with an impenetrable opacity. ‘third eyelid’ (terceira pálpebra) is a photographic series that brings together a set of images taken in urban spaces, consisting of a collection of apparently inert and static gestures, as if paralysed in an uncertain time, but which simultaneously reveal a city in movement and in transformation. In the dense opacity of the images, as well as in the attempt to reach nakedness or transparency, small tears or cracks appear, allowing us to peek beyond the translucent veil. The visual narrative is interrupted to make room for mysterious and clouded surfaces - symbols and little phantasmagories that hint at the impermanence of objects.
The home has long been represented as a territory of overlapping, even contradictory, narratives — at times a utopian refuge, at others a site of oppression. Today, as the boundaries between public and private spheres grow increasingly porous, one aspect of this interior world remains largely taboo: domestic labour. Historically shaped by class and gender, it is a silent giant that whispers as it drains hours, days, months, years.
The language of the domestic is the language of repetition, where gestures reproduce themselves through muscle memory — an endless running in circles, like a rodent in a cage, beneath the relentless ticking of the clock.
This photographic project, initiated in 2024, collects objects, landscapes, and small actions that inhabit the intimate hum of daily life, inviting a contemplative gaze upon the banal. The home becomes a stage where a monotonous choreography unfolds — a space where tenderness, vulnerability, and the quiet violence of routine coexist and complete one another.
Patrícia Assis
Patrícia Assis (1993, Algarve) is a Lisbon-based visual artist working with photography.
With an academical background in Political Science and International Relations (B.A., FCSH-UNL, Lisbon), Culture Studies (M.A., FCH-UCP, Lisbon) and Discourses of Contemporary Photography (post-graduation, FBAUL, Lisbon), her artistic practice reflects upon these various fields of interest - focusing on urban spaces and their mutations, as well as the relationship we establish with different geographies. Working either as symbols, cultural references or mere instances of contemplation, the images are not intended to be documental-based on subjective experience, they suggest various narrative possibilities, sometimes more descriptive, other times more poetic.
In 2024, Assis self-published the photobook ‘terceira pálpebra’, named after the series presented in the group show ‘Banho de Paragem’ (2024, Collectif, Lisbon). She is one of the co-founders of colectivo ssensível.
