msdm a nomadic house-studio-gallery for photographic art and curatorial research, an expanded practice of the artist's book, photobook publishing and peer-to-peer collaboration created by contemporary artist paula roush


Minar o mundo circundante / To mine the surrounding world
João Pinharanda
Queer Paper Gardens exhibition, Electricity Museum Lisbon
[read curator's statement]




paula roush, has lived in London for two decades, situates her work in the field of artist's books recovering the techniques of surrealist and pre-surrealist collage, enriching, with this cross-language, the universe of feminist intervention that guides her. It is they who prolong Penrose's dialogue with Ernst, deepening its languages ​​and themes, reviewing it critically, signaling the political place of contemporary feminist question, including us as a global and not merely an individual entity.


The narrative and seductive fluency of the video (built in the same way as the collage) or the invitation to the formation of the spectators  in creative work sessions are essential pieces of continuity and renewal of the initial legacy. Leading us to "the pure working of thought" (André Breton) and the "systematic estrangement" of the Self, but without the illusion that this dream-field, this "alchemy of the visual image" (Max Ernst) is something that exists outside the History, ideology or position of the genres, wish to give a new meaning to Breton's program by presenting the first collages of Ernst in 1921: "to use the surrounding world to mine the surrounding world."

contact

paula roush   :::   paularoush@gmail.com
msdm studio :::      msdm@msdm.org.uk