Patricia Domínguez

The Ballad of the Dry Mermaids, 2020

Installation view: Abundant Futures in Troubled Times. Works from the TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection. C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba, Spain

Photo: ©ImagenSubliminal (Miguel de Guzman + Rocio Romero)
@imagensubliminal

installation view: How to Tread Lightly. st_age expanded, an exhibition, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, 2020. Photo: Roberto Ruiz | TBA21

TBA21 on st_age Patricia Domínguez How to Tread Lightly Digital Commissions & Productions Commissions Collection

Patricia Domínguez

La balada de las sirenas secas, 2020

Installation with Styrofoam mountain cascade, fiberglass, electrical water circuit, LED suit with mermaid tails, 3D-printed sculptures, holographic projections, single-channel video on monitor, color, sound, 31 min 54 sec

Overall dimensions variable
Commissioned and produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary for How to Tread Lightly
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

Emerging from the fourth chapter of Gaiaguardianxs, La balada de las sirenas secas materializes as a sculptural and sonic shrine to water justice. This evocative installation brings together ritual, ruin, and resistance in a multi-sensory assemblage centered around the hydrocommons of central Chile—particularly the Petorca region, devastated by drought and large-scale avocado monoculture.

At the core of the piece, a vertical video monitor rests like a relic on a bed of cracked earth, flanked by earthen mounds crowned with sculpted heads shaped like avocados—grim, thirsty, and accusatory. A mermaid figure, cloaked in mourning LEDs, kneels before the screen, evoking a votive posture—part lament, part invocation. The accompanying video work presents a series of scenes filmed near Palquico, where the land’s thirst is palpable. Set to a reinterpreted canto a lo divino—a syncretic musical form rooted in Jesuit tradition and local spiritual practices—the ballad becomes a prayer to absence: of water, of life, of balance.

By melding sacred music with contemporary ecological despair, Domínguez amplifies ancestral knowledge while articulating the violence of water commodification. La balada de las sirenas secas is not just an artwork—it is an elegy, a resistance altar, and a plea to reconsider the sacredness of water in an era of ecological collapse.

Credits:
Film written, directed, and edited by Patricia Domínguez.
Camera and cinematography: Emilia Martín
Assistant camera and sound recording: Ce Pams
Drone recordings: Cárol Pastenes & Jorge Pérez
Music by Futuro Fósil
3D modeling and digital animation by Álvaro Muñoz.
Cast and dialogue: Las Viudas del Agua and Juan López (Singer to the Divine)
LED costume: Alejando Abos-Padilla
Aguagramas costume design: Patricia Claro
Sound design by Patricia Domínguez with additional sound effects by Ce Pams.
Filmed in:
Petroglifos El Pedernal, Palquico, La Ligua, Plantaciones de aguacates El Carmen, (Province of Petorca, Chile).

Acknowledgments:
Curator Soledad Gutiérrez
Las Viudas del Agua
MODATIMA (Movimiento de defensa del agua, la tierra y la protección del medio ambiente).
MUCAM (Museo Campesino en Movimiento)
Códice Maya Tro Cortesiano, Museo las Américas
Galería Patricia Ready