As Small As Eyes is a tentacular project that takes the octopus as a critical lens to explore a hyper-individualistic, overcrowded world and its ecological implications. Borrowing the way an octopus moves, thinks and feels, the artists (Mariette Moor, Krystle Patel and Orsola Zane) work with video, sound, performative writing and kinetic sculpture to investigate more-than-human ways of being. With eight of the octopus’ nine brains in its legs, the project asks: what does it mean to experience the world through a plural mind led by touch as language?
The artists started this collaborative research project during their MFA that was born out of a shared interest in cephalopods. Positioning the octopus as both machine and method, its physical properties like elasticity, camouflage and regrowth destabilise neat categorisations in favour of complex and fluid notions of consciousness, the haptic and language. Its most recent common ancestor to the human dates back 600 million years, making the octopus the closest being to an alien on earth.
Mariette Moor is a London-based artist. After graduating from Goldsmiths (2022) and the Ruskin School of Art (2016), she began exhibiting across the UK and abroad. Mariette was Artist-in-Residence at the I-Park Art Foundation in Connecticut (2018) before becoming a member of the Sedici Group (2020). She was the recipient of Sir William Dunn Art Award and Vivien Leigh Drawing Prize. Her work is now housed in the permanent collections at the Oxford School of Pathology and the Ashmolean Museum.
Krystle Patel is a London-based Asian artist born in Texas, USA. For the past 15 years, she has been a practicing Dentist and recently moved away from clinical work to complete an MFA at Goldsmiths University. Over the past year, she has shown collaborative projects with The Florence Trust, Eastside Projects (The Exchange) and Deptford X. She has a monthly radio show with Aaja Music and RTM FM, exploring the sound aspects of her work. Krystle was selected for 2021 Bloomberg New Contemporaries and the Government Art Collection.
Orsola Zane was born in Venice in 1997. She graduated summa cum laude in Painting at the Fine Arts Academy of Venice in 2020. She graduated in 2022 with an MFA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 alumnus.