Patrícia J. Reis, born in 1981 in Lisbon, Portugal, is an installation media artist and researcher currently based in Vienna, Austria whose practice encompasses various formats and media to examine the human and non-human relationships with technology. In her interactive installations, she often appeals to the visitor’s sensuality in an intimate, haptic and sensual manner, encouraging them to become active participants of the artwork. Seeking to subvert visuality as the primary mode of experience, she plays with technology as a means to expand and stimulate corporeal perceptions in the viewer. Inspired by media theory, cybernetics, gender studies, and new materialism, Reis analyses similar modus operandi among humans and machines, such as program, system, and automatism, suggesting the human body as such and playing around with its own sensorial mechanisms. She is particularly drawn to perceptual phenomena that challenge conventional scientific explanations, often referred to in technology as glitches. Her work becomes distinctive in the contemporary art scene by incorporating diverse imagery and media, including painting, sculpture, photography, video, and interactive systems. She creatively plays with the agency of diverse materials, taking advantage of their potential aesthetically and electronic qualities. These materials range from paper, crystals, and precious metals like gold and silver, to resin, styrofoam, wood, metal, foam, textile, and ceramics.

She studied Painting at the Superior School of Art and Design (ESAD) in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, graduating in 2004. Subsequently, she pursued Media Art, completing a Master’s program at Lusófona University in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2011. She holds a Ph.D. in Art from the University of Évora, Portugal, earned in 2016.

Reis was a PhD fellow researcher at the National Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal from 2011 to 2015. Between 2006 and 2012, she worked as a full-time Assistant Professor, lecturing on Photography, Video, and Digital Arts at the Polytechnic Institute of Beja, Portugal. She held the position of Senior Artist at the Digital Arts Department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, from 2018 to 2023. Additionally, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, in the artist-based research project “Feminist hacking: building circuits as an artistic practice” from 2020 to 2023. She was also a guest post-doctoral researcher at the Weizenbau Institut at TU in Berlin in 2022 and a lecturer at the Media Design department of the Art University in Linz, Austria, from 2015 to 2023.

Currently, she holds the position of Post-doctoral Senior Researcher as the leader of the artist-based research project “Hacking the body as the black box” at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, as part of the Elise Richter-Programm (Peek) grant, spanning from 2023 to 2027. Additionally, since 2015, she has been a Lecturer at the Digital Arts Department of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.