Inés Cardó

En la edición de marzo de @elledecoration_es , especial de arte, hay un artículo precioso sobre la residencia Swatch Art Peace Hotel (Shanghái, CN) y el tiempo que pasamos ahí 🤍 súper bien acompañada @koct3l @cristinaghetti.visualartist Gracias @thingsofcano @swatchartpeacehotel !

Some excerpts of the text by Mayara Carvalho for my installation 𝘭𝘢𝘻𝘰𝘴 𝘥𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘰 / 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴, displayed at @marcablanca.press . Thank you May for the care in your words and for placing this performance piece in conversation with Ailton Krenak — to whom my practice is so endlessly indebted ♥️ [Text: Mayara Carvalho @maybluess Translation to Spanish: Inés Cardó Performance documentation in digital video: Ben Donateo @bendonateo ]

𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 2025 photo-performance with clay kero, kew gardens. 120 film photography by @paloma.passetto ________   For a while I have been obsessed with keros, ceremonial cups that in Pre-Columbian times were used in rituals of reciprocity and in offerings to the gods. I began to think of these artefacts as signifiers of practices of generosity. The chronicles of the colonisation of the Americas are full of descriptions of native generosity that is betrayed by the colonisers’ plunder. I kept thinking of the loss of this world of generosity as extraction begins, the loss of this world of commons as borders start to be drawn. The last time I visited Lima I bought a kero replica with the intention of making a mould out of it. When I held it in my hands, I instantly brought it to my ear, its opening fitting perfectly the side contour of my face – almost as if telling me a secret. When I was little, I would use cups as sound amplifying devices to listen to conversations behind closed doors. I would hold shells against my ear to hear the sea. The gesture reminded me of these mediated intimacies. I started to think – can this kero become a sound-amplifier? A mediator in a message delivered from the ground? A device to deep listen to what has been extracted? Or, how can the act of listening strengthen solidarities between human & more-than-human diasporas?

𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘰, 2025 vessel for a multiple offering 18x5x8cm‿︵‿︵‿︵

𝘰𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘢 𝘐𝘝. / 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐𝘝., 2025 clay, ceramic bowls, dried purple maize 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐𝘝. draws from ancestral pre-Columbian practices of offering, in which communities brought gifts to natural elements — as mountains or rivers —revered as deities. The work reflects on forms of relationality that move beyond extractive logics, proposing instead a mode of being in the world grounded in communion, affective bonds, and interdependence. Purple maize held a central place among many pre-Columbian cultures inhabiting the territory now known as Peru. It was used to prepare chicha morada, a ceremonial drink whose consumption endures today as a widely embraced national beverage. In this piece, maize is reimagined as an oracle. It evokes the ancestral memory embedded within nature and carried through tradition. The corn is approached as a living being, adorned with teeth made of gold clay that allude to popular and urban practices of bodily embellishment — such as gold teeth or grillz — often seen as signifiers of abundance and wealth. In this gesture, the work also quietly unsettles colonial museological practices that have collected human remains— teeth, bones, fragments — as objects of study and (dis)possession. Displayed at ‘Bitter Spring’, @mara_projects , curated by @lisjatershana . On view until March 12th. Photos by Michal Brzezinski @lelenthal

Mara Projects is pleased to present Bitter Spring, a group exhibition taking place in a former whisky store on Kingsland Road, Shoreditch. Drawing on the ancient Greek word ‘pharmakon’ — a substance that is at once poison and remedy — the exhibition asks what it means to encounter something that might both heal and harm you. Before pharmacy became a science, substances did not promise guaranteed outcomes, and apothecaries operated at the intersection of folklore, superstition, and empirical experimentation. Bitter Spring inhabits that space where transformation, risk, and trust are inseparable. The exhibition brings together Bora Baboçi, Inés Cárdó, Ben Grosse Johannböcke, Felix Murphy, Edoardo Rito, Kairi Tokoro, and Renid Tosuni. Bitter Spring 5 — 12 March 2026 17B Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, E2 8AA London. Private View: Wednesday 4 March, 6–9pm. All welcome. For further information, please contact [email protected] @borababoci @inescdo @bengrjart @felixmurchadh @ritoedoardo @kairitokoro @redtosuni

lazos de deseo (2025) de @in éscardó es una performance, documentación en vídeo digital, de una duración de 5:05 min, producido durante una residencia en @swatchartpeacehotel (shanghái, cn). concebida como una colaboración entre la artista y el paisaje chino, lazos de deseo explora el deseo como una fuerza que atraviesa y comunica cuerpos humanos y más-que-humanos. un hilo ata un cuerpo a un bosque de bambú, tejiendo una malla a medida que este camina. se convierte en un cordón umbilical sustituto que materializa una fuerza capaz de enredar el cuerpo con el territorio. en esta acción, la piel es el órgano que escucha: atendiendo a la tensión del hilo que amenaza con romperse, que exige desacelerar, avanzar o cambiar de rumbo. en este desplazamiento de la agencia se activa un proceso de reaprendizaje de la escucha. lazos de deseo (2025) se inaugurará el jueves 19 a las 20:00 h y estará expuesto hasta el 27 de febrero en @marcablanca.press coincidiendo con las celebraciones del año nuevo chino. #marcablanca #bibliotecas #inéscardó #lazosdedeseo

portrait of my aura 🩸

Spent six weeks in residence at @swatchartpeacehotel (Shanghai) as part of Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Collective, following on from our collaboration with @swatch that began at @tate Modern Lates last winter, where we hosted our Safety Blanket textile workshops. ‘Safety Blanket’ is a series of ongoing knitting workshops where participants are invited to knit collectively from the same piece, creating a multiple-edged shape that grows outwards and becomes a starting point for moments of spontaneous intimacy and connection between strangers. Working site-specifically, we created a new textile responding to Shanghai’s visual and artistic landscape, now part of the Swatch Art Peace Hotel collection. We also displayed and hosted making sessions at Westbund Art & Design Fair @westbundartfair , and took part in the panel talk ‘When Art Becomes Swatch’, exploring Swatch’s commitment to supporting craft and visual arts. Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner is a collective formed in 2019 by Inés Cardó, Katerina Mimikou, Sophie Dickson and Jessie Evans, running workshops that use playful—and sometimes mundane—creative acts as tools for wellbeing and reflection.

𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥 (𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵), 2025 installation, 230 x 180cm ginko leaves, chinese ink, fishing wire made whilst in residence at @swatchartpeacehotel the tao te ching says: “𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵, 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘵” and that’s that 𓇢𓆸

𝘭𝘢𝘻𝘰𝘴 𝘥𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘰 / 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴, 2025 performance documentation, 35mm film   Performed at a bamboo forest in Shanghai. I wrap a thread around my belly and tie the yarn to one of the trees. As I walk through the bamboos, the thread creates a mesh. At some point, the thread is so tense that it breaks. Thinking of desire as a pre-verbal form of communication with the more-than-human, and nature as a desiring entity with the agency to decide what it gives and holds back. I listen with my skin to the pull of the thread: it tells me when to slow down, when to move, where to turn. It becomes a surrogate umbilical cord, materialising a force that entangles my body with the territory. The forest decides the moment of rupture, and with it, the end of the action.

trees of light and fire #35mm, shanghai