© Jorge das Neves

© Jorge das Neves

Jessica Warboys

This Tail Grows Among Ruins, 2022
16 mm film transfer to digital video & digital video, colour, sound, 10’, loop
Performer: Ieva Kabašinskaitė
Sound: Morten Norbye Halvorsen
Camera: Aline Belfort & Ville Piipp
Courtesy of the artist

This Trail Grows Among Ruins is an installation including a film of the same name shot this winter in Coimbra, a diptych titled River Paintings (including Worm Moon and Fossbekken, 2022) and the sculpture Tail (2022). Locations in the film include the Mondego River, the Biblioteca Joanina, the subterranean Cryptoportico and the Santa Clara-a-Nova Convent. Recalling the filmed scene of the Mondego River the River Paintings move from the stream to the river bank; the raw canvases painted with beeswax have been submerged in the river Fossbekken, in Norway, before being pulled to the bank, where mineral pigments have been applied directly onto the wet canvas. In Tail (2022) a cast beeswax candle doubles as a prop in the film and a sculpture; installed as if emerging from the Convent walls, it will be lit at night. This group of works is a crystallization of thoughts and forms of bodies (human and animal) and objects, and an examination of their potential for growth and transformation.