In-Connective Matter(l)

Victoria Hertel is a German artist with a Venezuelan mother who currently lives in Singapore. This cultural background has allowed her to articulate an artistic inquiry that connects complex affective dimensions. Through a multidimensional approach, she seeks to provoke experiences in the viewer that awaken awareness of the connective threshold between digital technology, bodily mechanics, and the immateriality of the spirit.

In her vision of art as a vehicle for experiential consciousness, Victoria expresses an intentionality toward deceleration, ecological impact, and memory in resonance with introspective moments.

During her residency at lagos | CDMX, she explored plants, spices, and materials that would connect her—and the Mexican audience—beyond her 2023 piece Aroma, in which she explores memory through smell as a form of kinship, inspired by the chicken broth her mother made for her when she was sick. Her stay in Mexico led her into markets, dishes, recipes, and conversations around food, care, comfort, and recovery.

For this Open Studio, Victoria presents the piece Ocote (Pinus montezumae), in which, rooted in the senses, rituals, and memory, she combines technological devices and clay vessels with organic matter. The work functions in both calm and alert modes of a sensory journey: visually, through the test tubes that display different states of matter; olfactorily, through the scent emitted by a technological device activated by body heat; and poetically, through words and reflection. This work engages energetic transformation, technology, materiality, and effluvia—where small particles, gently and slowly, trigger connections such as meals cooked on an open flame, the ritual of lighting a fire and talking under the stars, or a backyard carnita asada gathering.

Ocote (Pinus montezumae) ignites curiosity to form links between forms of knowledge and sparks questions such as: How might technological acceleration and deliberate slowness enter into dialogue through the practice of ritual traditions? How do technological, bodily, and emotional contexts influence each other? Or perhaps, is there an internal-external / material-ethereal environment within each of us that longs to be kindled and put into practice?

olgaMargarita dávila
Chief Curator
Anáhuac, Mexico City – May 2025

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