Aleix PlademuntMATTER

Derived from mater, the Latin word for mother, matter refers to the substance of which all things are made. In English, the word matter can also indicate importance or significance – something to be concerned with. The Matter project analyses the age-old question of existence; it searches for our origin.

Matter is composed of tiny, indivisible particles, inert in themselves, without movement, unable to reproduce. But it leads to life. The radical expansion of the Big Bang created everything. During its life cycle, an organism undergoes many changes – it grows, learns, evolves and dies – but matter always remains. Matter is a constant. It was there from the beginning and will remain there long into the future.

Humans have emerged from one of the most recent evolutionary alignments in space and time. We have endeavoured to dominate and transform matter: augmenting it with impossible compounds, generating artificial constructs in the laboratory and in everyday environments, interpreting it in increasingly abstract ways. Complexity governs evolution, to the point of forgetting that evolution was possible thanks to the precise imitation of original processes.