P. 09
This Year’s Edition
Daniela Ambrósio
Portuguese Emerging Art is an annual book that fulfills EMERGE’s primary goal of promoting contemporary art, with a special focus on emerging art. The 2019 edition of this book, the third one, includes a new factor, a jury constituted by elements from different countries: Danilo Fortunato, Angolan gallery owner, Heloísa Vivanco, Brazilian curator, Hugo Dinis, Portuguese curator and María Gracia de Pedro, Spanish researcher, gallery owner and curator.
From my point of view, as project coordinator but not intervening in the artistic options, it was extremely enriching to hear the perspectives of this international jury, who are unanimous in saying that there is great quality in the so-called emerging artistic production in Portugal.
From edition to edition, we have been adding factors that value the participation of artists in the book. In addition to the jury, the awards given by Galeria Cisterna and the residency in New Media Art TempStudio, the reception of the Serralves Foundation for the launch, the presentation, for the second consecutive year, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Museu do Chiado, the support of the Instituto Camões in international dissemination, and the involvement of all participants in sharing this object. Without everyone’s contribution, we could not achieve it.
On the other hand, this book would not have happened if it had not been supported by the PLMJ Foundation, the first patronage support. The PLMJ Foundation has been with us from the start, and it’s not just the financial support that counts!
Unfortunately we do not have Portuguese public support in this issue because the computer system of the Directorate-General of Artes did not allow it. This is important to say only to reinforce the idea that this book is only realized thanks to the investment of all participants, especially the artists and the Emerge team, so this edition will not be bilingual. It is still possible to translate in several languages through the link provided!
Having said that, we hope you enjoy it!
P. 10
The Art of NOW and it’s Tendencies
Danilo Fortunato
EMERGE is a nonprofit platform which promotes contemporary art produced by emerging artists while reflecting on current art circuits and trends. Inclusively they promote media actions, discussing the visibility spaces. In a context in which artistic production is by nature dematerialized and transitory, the question that runs through is: What is the current state of the art and its trends? More and more new trends are being noticed in the Portuguese art scene and in the world. These new trends are generally remarkable in the various expressions. Culture shock has influenced aesthetics, making room for a new audience and a new prism under the critical eye of current contemporary art.
The artistic scenario, the changes and their particularities did not prevent expressions such as photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, video, installation among others continue to be a trend. Works such as those of the atelier Contencioso in the exhibition “Mano a Mano“ – an expression that designates the melee combat -; as of Lara Portela with the series “Seres que outrora foram humanos”, works that arise from the derivation of archival research through painting on photography; or even like Márcio Carvalho in his “Falling Thrones – Sporting Histories” series, which uses the Olympic games and their power structures to compete for other stories and remember other cultures and communities. These new key players communicate freely addressing various social issues thus creating, as I understand, a break in the current growing cultural consumerism, bringing to Portugal a new audience instigating the emergence of new institution and platforms of artistic emergence.
Portuguese Emerging Art book 2019 simultaneously articulates several curatorial axes: artwork context, innovation and originality, grounding, framing and exhibition, communication, impact and quality. Simultaneously, are produced both historical revisions and presentation of unpublished works, which together have the ability to revitalize the discussions about spaces of visibility in the artistic circuit. The artworks are interspersed with exhibitions, performances and debates, associated with the realization of side projects by Daniela Ambrósio – Founder and President of this cultural association and Jorge Reis Founder and Curator-Producer-Artist, who question, outside and within exhibition environments, through of artistic actions in dialogue with communicational contexts.
The selection of the artists that compose the book is due to the potencies and dialogues that their works produce in contact with communicational circuits, while reorganizing information and weaving alternatives to the current hegemonic discourse, as well as to the social dimension of their practices. The main purpose is to present their experiences as emerging artists on a platform open to discussion and relate them to a set of activities.
P. 12
Southern Cruise | Crux
Heloísa Vivanco
The multiple opportunities for reflection and debates on the contemporary artistic production of the artists selected for Portuguese Emerging Art cannot disregard cultural plurality, homogeneity, amalgam of languages and the role of individuals involved in a social, political and global context without which nothing should be unfounded, in which narrow postures of thought or opposition, mounting under construction, about an individual position in the world.If contemporary art tenses the present historical context, manifested by social contradictions and violated human rights, it is necessary to take a critical gaze at the expository forms of contemporary artistic production, understood by the bias of the notion of south¹, which viscerally brings to mind. It brings to light the relationship between art and politics in the context of the globalization of culture, and which is intrinsically related to political, economic, socio-cultural and geostrategic practices.
The publication of the PEA2019 book, a process that will reveal EMERGE as a platform for the dissemination of artistic production in Portugal and other countries, now has the additional input of an international jury Angola, Brazil, Spain and Portugal, which aggregate perspectives and social and geopolitical contexts. In the context of the visual arts, EMERGE stands out for promoting the production and democratization of access to forms of expression, from the most traditional to the most transgressive. The book is a collective reflection on the questions raised by the jury, which mapped the works, shared ideas, sought to convey the meanings of the works and reflected on the contents that merge in the various supports through which this contemporary artistic production expresses itself. The themes mentioned by the artists such as hybrid identities, colonization, immigrations, memories, social fabric, new political orders and collective and individual visual narratives were put on the agenda. In this sense, the production of visual narratives, the sharing of artistic experiences and the critical positioning, whether individual or collective, reinforce that the action of appreciating, analyzing and experiencing an artistic expression is a particular and universal experience at the same time.
1 [The notion of the South] “responds to the axes of transnational cooperation created in the context of decolonization and economic underdevelopment that marked several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America between the 1950s and 1980s. Over the past twenty years, the South has expanded into global outlines, forming a map of historical and political experiences, led by a hemisphere cut. If their uses sometimes impinge on contradictions proper to binary thoughts, they also indicate new and complex transits of economic, cultural and symbolic capital.” (free translation) MOURA, Sabrina. Paralelos e Meridianos em Rearranjo [Rearranging Parallels and Meridians]. In PANORAMAS DO SUL: Leituras Perspectivas para outras geografias do pensamento. [SOUTH PANORAMAS: Perspective Readings for other geographies of thought.]. São Paulo: Ed. Sesc SP e Associação Cultural Video Brasil, 2015, p. 15.
P. 13
The Unknown Artworks
Hugo Dinis
Your figure is neither perfectly well painted nor perfectly well drawn; it bears throughout the signs of this unfortunate indecision. If you did not feel that the fire of your genius was hot enough to weld into one the rival methods, you ought to have chosen honestly the one or the other, and thus attained the unity which conveys one aspect, at least, of life. — Honoré de Balzac, Unknown Masterpiece, 1831
Works of art by emerging or early production artists do not differ much from the in-tentions of works produced by other more experienced artists, namely: the works attempt a very meticulous and careful approach to their own questions in relation to art. Balzac’s quote unveils the issue: What are the ‘living conditions’? How can an artist simultaneously reach and represent them? But the overriding question that falls upon all is: What is the origin of the work of art?
Balzac’s tale tells the story of three painters: Poussin, a young man who yearns to be a painter and lover of ‘grace’ Gillette; Porbus, an adult painter who is painting Egyptian Mary, a saint-whore; and Frenhofer, a master of painting who has been portraying for more than ten years the ideal woman, Catherine Lescault. The three painters yearn to represent the desired woman, who will be described as the most beautiful among women, obviously ‘a blameless woman, a body whose contours are of perfect beauty’, ‘this tireless Venus of the ancients’, ‘the complete divine nature, in sum, the ideal (…) heavenly beauty.’ The desire of any artist is to find his Venus, or Aphrodite, a goddess who was impregnated by nature and love. There are two different Greek traditions about her birth. On the one hand, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who derives a goddess of earthly love, chthonic goddess, bound to earth and underground. On the other hand, she is a heavenly goddess, daughter of Uranus, whose genitals were cut off and when they fell into the sea they spawned the goddess born of his sperm. It is in this dichotomy between earth and heaven that the desire to represent this ideal woman resides.
Freud’s The Motive of the Three Safes (1908) reflects on this duality and on how the choice lies with the most beautiful. But beauty is not interested in being elected. Before Paris, Aphrodite, to be the most beautiful goddess of Olympus, presents him with Helena who will provoke the Trojan War. Freud points out that the choice will fall on the lead vault over gold or silver. In the case of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the youngest daughter was only chosen because she is the most beautiful and sensible, but when she must show all the love towards her father, she is silent. ‘What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent,’ or simply say, ‘Nothing, my Lord.’ In this muteness, which is associated with death, lies a contradiction: if, on the one hand, she is the most beautiful, she is the goddess of love and life; on the other hand, she is mute and therefore the goddess of death. Freud adds that ‘no one chooses, but that one is victimized by fate’ and, in this sense, the choice is free but inevitable. However, human nature will prefer the goddess of love over the goddess of death. Death is related to fear. Fantasy is inherent in men to ‘satisfy their desires which reality does not fulfill’. Although both goddesses existed simultaneously, only the goddess of love is seen to be the most soothing and pleasurable.
The contradiction persists in the motives of desire for the ideal woman. The Christian figure of the virgin mother, created by Western culture to give birth to the savior, brings with it this disturbing duality. She will reconcile the irreconcilable: virginity and motherhood. However, it is not a double figure, but on the contrary, she is one woman who embodies such a paradox that will become vital for human creation. Western painting has always been concerned with being a compromise between the divine and the human: it was always represented woman, mother of Jesus and, simultaneously, as a virgin, who had not been touched by anyone, only by God. Due to the impurity and natural contradiction of the figure, virginity will be overvalued in relation to motherhood, because Christian dogma will not allow the savior’s mother to be soiled by human semen, but only by divine seed, appearing the Immaculate Conception of Mary as the extreme of purity. Motherhood will be downgraded because of the impurity it represents. Thus, the virgin has the function of eclipsing the woman, who will be forgotten. The virgin mother is not a woman, she is a virgin, and as a way of representing this loss, she is now called the Virgin Mary, which sublimates what distinguishes her as a woman, motherhood. At the same time emerges the figure of Aphrodite. The representation of this Venus of love is always shrouded in a realm of unreality that Christian art has never known. It is in the pictorial world of something that does not exist that Aphrodite becomes a rival figure. The virgin mother will be linked to Diana, the hunting goddess, who violently defends the virginity of her nymphs and who repels all men and is linked to rituals of human sacrifice and death. Thus the virgin mother lives in this duality, in the combination of the goddess of love and the goddess of death. The monstrosity lies in the secret of the connivance of these two forces. Art must be the proper pursuit of these two sources, or possible conditions of life and death: one that gives us the power of creation and another that gives us the power of destruction.
Art is a balanced conjugation of this well kept secret. But where does this secret reside and form? Balzac points out that the ‘two rival methods’ that were not merged together in ‘the fire of your genius’ throughout the tale various references are made to fire: ‘conservation of the sacred fire’, ‘animated by the vise of life’ and ‘the flame of Prometheus has once again died out in your hands and many points of your picture have not been touched by the heavenly flame.’ The fire that Prometheus has stolen will give men independence and knowledge, for being the home fire produced by industry and not the natural fire sent from heaven. This divine fire was a secret kept by the archangel in the secret treasure chest of life. In Freud, the secret vault is an essential symbol of the ideal woman. Admitting that this woman is related to both life and death, the secret the archangel holds is the fire that resides between life and death. It is to this tension that the artist, despite not being able to live, or even wanting to, has to access, preferably for a moment, to give some of that fire to the works of art. For Balzac the secret of fire will only be revealed in the genius of the artist himself. In Judgment Faculty Criticism Kant states that art must meet the rules of nature and transport it to artistic objects, but without showing that this has happened. The artistic object must in turn become a model and an example. Thus, ‘genius is the talent (natural gift) that gives the rule to art’, in other words, talent is an innate ability of the artist who belongs to nature itself and not to the creator. Talent should only be used so that the nature of genius make the object an artistic object. For Balzac, this conception of the idea of the creator is very evident, since ‘the mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it’. In appropriating the technique, the artist must expect and force that the beauty of nature is bare and presented as creation and destruction. The artist has in his possession, when he reaches the truth, the power to give life to objects and, like God, to give death. Master Frenhofer no longer gives or receives rules. Strictly speaking, he, even knowing what genius is, is nevertheless unable to be. He fails genius, not because of ‘ignorance’ but ‘excessive science.’ Like Pygmalion, Frenhofer falls in love with his perfect woman. But when he realizes that his work has overflowed this power of creation, in other words, his balance between death and life has tended to the side of life, he will prefer death, to the woman represented and to himself.
The artist knows that the tension lies in something that is familiar, creation, and in something completely strange, death. The strangely familiar feeling in Freud is something that should remain hidden and becomes evident, as ‘something familiar long ago in psychic life that has only been sidelined through repression.’ Now if these two domains, creation and death, are the same, what is familiar is at the same time strange. Death is the most threatening because it is totally unknown. Extreme fear is death itself, which can be glimpsed by being buried alive. However, Freud says that this fear is the transformation of another, which is opposite to this, which is the interior life in the maternal body. In other words, it can be said that the intrinsic desire, which one is afraid of, although one desires, is to be in a place so welcoming that it also similar to the grave itself, thought of as the womb of mother earth. The artist, like any man, yearns to return to live in a familiar place he can never return to, which is why he insistently goes back to representing this place, which is both life and death.
Thus the desire for the representation of the ideal woman, or the origin of the work of art, lies in the human condition of death and life. The artist will get to death, the energy needed to give birth to something. Art is strangely familiar because it springs from the love of death. What distinguishes Gillette and Catherine Lescault is their condition of life and death. Gillette is a woman who has within herself the power of creation of a mortal, while Catherine Lescault is a mute painting that attempts to as-cend to the world of the living. She is immortal and it is in this capacity that she is desired. What unites these two women is that they both want to make a transition from one condition to another, between life and death, but in opposite directions. One yearns for the life of the other and the other the death of the former. The role of the artist and art will be to balance this tenuous and fragile passage.
Note to reader: quotations are free translation
P. 16
Creativity in the Countryside
Jorge Reis
On November 11th I was part of a public conversation about creativity in the countryside of Portugal in the context of the Bienal de Coruche 2019. A country suffering from chronic imbalance caused by the centralization of power with respect to the distribution of public but also private funding in the cultural sector. Therefore, it should be the responsibility of the local authority to stimulate and develop programs that focus on the creative development of the region. While facing different challenges from those of densely populated places, local authorities must face creativity in any sector as a driving force for local development and dynamism. In this way, it will be possible to attract intellectuals wishing to develop work in a low density area surrounded by Nature. This return to Nature is, at some point, sooner or later, essential to creation. Creation is understood as an act of technical, conceptual, artistic, philosophical, political, scientific innovation, among others. In the realm of Art these territories are always more conducive to creation in an experimental, existential, sensory, emotional and relational context. For all these reasons, I accepted the invitation to participate, which honored me a lot and from which relevant reflections on the theme that I now transcribe punctually.
The conversation included Professors Teresa Matos Pereira and Kátia Sá (ESELx – Lisbon Higher Education School), local visual artists André Banha and Carmo Moser, and Professor Orlando Franco (Lusófona University). This is why we were invited: I have a background in fine arts and started a curator career by positioning myself as a curator-artist-producer and ideologist, researching the “Role of the Curator in a Creative Industry in a Low Density Area”, from the University of Aveiro, I bridged creativity and place. Professors Teresa and Kátia, for the projects they developed in public space with their students in low density areas. The local artists André and Carmo to better explain the advantages and disadvantages of having a contemporary art project in Coruche. And finally, Professor Orlando, not only for his experience as a professor, but also for his knowledge on the curatorship of the place and contemporary art projects with local and national impact. In addition to these, other actors could contribute. We had an audience of almost ninety people in a room that turned out to be small and therefore intimate.
Luís Marques, de director of Bienal de Coruche 2019, introduced the participants making room for dialogue and the development of ideas. The Professors started by presenting projects developed within the Bienal and other similar events since 2013. These are after class projects, developed in communities or in the former seminar “Visual Arts and Community,” many of them in artistic residencies context, across the country. The goal is to get students to have contact with other realities. Community outreach projects were then presented and provided true examples of how artistic creativity can foster the relationship and education of audiences for contemporary art. To point out is the project developed in Santiago do Cacém with the fishing community former inhabitants of the coastal strip, where the memory of the fishermen’s huts / haystacks was rescued. It consisted of gathering testimonies to write and draw the memories they had of these dwellings that are nonexistent today. The work that was later developed resulted in models made with local artisans who reconstructed this popular architectural memory. Also from this project was created a video with ethnographic surveys and memories collected during the residency process. Luís Marques, stressed the importance of continuing the partnership with this higher school especially through the initiatives of the teachers, namely in the project of envolvências locais (local involvings), which is part of the Bienal de Coruche program and where this school presented, in this edition, the “Poetic Archive of the Place”, drawings, photographs and installation by the students of the 1st year of the ESELx Degree of Visual Arts and Technologies.
In my speech I mentioned the importance of interception between institutions inside and outside Coruche, the involvement of the community, and the contribution of art to the interpretation and development of the place. Following the previous presentation, I began by mentioning how my interest in drawing was aroused in me. Drawing is a technique which relates to design, architecture and others. I mentioned the artistic disciplines I consider most transversal. After this introduction I made a provocation about creativity because I wanted to approach the subject from general to particular speaking: We think we are creative beings who hold the greatest intellectual faculties for development and innovation. However, we forget that there is an entity of which we are part, which, for its complexity and the way it is structured, for its root logic, shows to me as the really creative and transforming entity of all the forms existing in the world. Therefore, I consider Nature the only creative entity. Lavoisier already said “In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes.” Now if everything changes, nothing is more accurate to say that we create nothing. Nature is the only entity that brings together the two valences: creation and transformation. We just transform. So we take advantage of it to transform. A clear example of this I think most people might agree on: Before the human invented the wheel, it probably already existed in nature. Today all the resources transformed, such as iron, electricity, chemicals, paints and the chair we sit on, are all human-made transformations that result from the need to adapt to a world built and perhaps further away from human-nature relationship. In art, it is also possible to conclude this theory. When we come across an abstract painting, this one, to be abstract, had to be abstracted from something, that is, from Nature. Surrealism is born from the transformation of reality to something that comes close to the imaginary dream, but dreams are nothing more than lived experiences of reality and the thought that is structured from it. Therefore from nature. Concrete art, which focuses on the artistic object as a plastic motive for talking about itself, is no longer built on the elements and chemicals we draw from Nature. Therefore, I consider that the fact that we place ourselves as a creative entity makes us egocentric beings who think that the Earth revolves around us when we walk on and with it. This is the way I found to explain that we just transform, with the materials that nature gives us (developing ideas).
Professor Orlando agreed with my approach. He mentioned that “it is difficult for the pedagogical scope to convey this message, that creativity / doing something new is a utopia. We built from other things, we quote, review and the singular act at that moment and time: singularity. That context is something that never happened.
Nature: It is a question that arises, to what extent are we related to nature? That it is not a memory of something very diffuse while it is present and we do not identify ourselves. For example: life in the city; The possible contact is often the sky. The rest is domesticated nature, namely gardens. She is but not noticeable. ”She is domesticated.
The artist André Banha gave as an example the work of the duo Maria Manuela Lopes and Paulo Bernardino Bastos who says they took the singularity of Coruche to develop a piece of installation in public space, about the shelters and cocoons of animals and birds that cohabit the village. In a practically integrative relationship with the sounds of everyday human life. André also refers as an example, that in this village we turn our eyes and see plowed fields and its horizon. In a metropolis such as Madrid, the horizon is not, considering this a strong feature of the village – communion with rural, agricultural and urban space as a source of inspiration for creative development. He adds, “You hear the birds in the evening mixed with the urban noise.” Regarding the artistic works developed in the context of the artistic residence at the Bienal de Coruche, works that André Banha was accompanying in its development, refers to the work of Tiago Margaça, considering that he took advantage of a deep understanding of the characteristics of the village, where he found in his installation and painting a balance between the upper and agricultural part of the village that had spread the plateau; Therefore, it considers that this work resulted in a balance between old and new part of the village. Reinforcing and referring to the globally of participating artists, “with the artistic residences the artists worked the unique characteristics of the site.”. André refers to the change in reception of works and artistic projects by the organization of this Bienal. 2019 was the first year in which artistic residences were performed and the result was enriching from the point of view of the artistic expression as well as its relationship with the inhabitants, even because there was a relocation of the event to the new neighborhood that they now intend to call “Bairro das Artes” (Art District). André Banha added: “The size of the Bienal does not have to compete in quantity with the other biennials, it has to take its particularity, its specificity and work from there.” He also gave as an example a thought of our filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira: “If there is no money to film the car, let us film the wheel, but film it well and we can do it!”.
The artist Carmo Moser stressed the issue of “Nature and our competition with Nature, shelter, domesticating, symbiosis with nature makes us the only animal that is never satisfied. You need to feed on colored and food design, clothes, make artistic pieces to your delight; Eternal dissatisfaction is what distinguishes us from animals. Question: In this Bienal came the idea of artistic residences, artists staying here, a different phenomenon from what happened before. The artists lived here, made guided tours, visited various circuits. The duo of artists Maria Manuela Lopes and Paulo Bernardino Bastos got a nocturnal birdwatching guided by a native of the village, who is in love with the nocturnal animal life, especially birds. The artists were spilling over and looking for the line of their work. These lines are all around the design, the geographical line, the nature line and human lines, the neighborhood. All tangled lines is the most significant trait that connects all pieces and all intentions. The way some works relate because of these. It is a contamination that we can influence each other. Not bad, on the contrary. It is up to us to enjoy our heritage and to go our way. ”.
The theme enabled to draw a parallel between the subject matter and the experience at the Bienal, it was ending.
Professor Teresa noted that “this work with ESELx students last year came at the end of the year, and we came in April. As Katia was saying, it was supposed to do graphic diary and photography of the neighborhood. For the sake of organization, we opted for all the first year classes, altogether 70 people. The only criterion we had at the outset was to distribute the neighborhood map, give each group two streets to cover the whole neighborhood. When we arrived the scheme fell apart and they did a much broader job. As Katia said, the work is done with the site, but also with the people. Seeing the arrival of many people with tripods and cameras has created a certain strangeness. Of course throughout the day, people were talking, they opened doors, some people showed pictures of their collection, that had later been requested by the Bienal organization. The fact is that on opening day they remembered the people who had been drawing. It is also interesting the collective process, ie. several people who are in a group, in residence, is also interesting. For example in street art, the work process is revealed. This has been reported by the students who participated in the artistic residences. It has a broader educational dimension.The sharing of people in these activities through conversations, but there is also the sharing of artists that makes sense to show what is done on the spot. ”
Since this was a conversation, there was time for the audience to intervene and make questions, not only of the subject matter, but which later led to other pressing issues of contemporary art.
The contributions were diverse and valuable. But I want to add a thought about site and the creativity. A few days ago I was telling to Daniela Ambrósio a situation that in the history of art is verified in duos that decide to make a career together or separately, but developing work in the same space. In most cases there is a vertiginous approximation of the trait, the way of painting, the modus operandi. During the conversation it was concluded that it may be the result of the empathy of the close relationship that each other has. I believe so happens because of the place. When we relate to location we try to make landscape images familiar to us and become our home. In fact, it is no coincidence that we were first nomads and only in the Neolithic, we developed concepts such as home and family. This sense of interpreting the site and having empathy for it is the starting point for its transformative development.
P. 20
The emerging artist as an important key fighting for the future of the contemporary art
María Gracia de Pedro
We are going towards a stagnant moment for the contemporary art scene, where artists are still looking for a gallery to sell their works. If the trade of artworks could still be considered the easiest way for them to monetise their artworks, they are probably going to bump into the same issue their future sellers are currently living.
In the last decade, the contemporary art market has been suffering more than ever, and there are different theories that reaffirm that. A plausible one is that the number of galleries for square meter in the capitals of art is too high. On the opposite way, the quantity of collectors is not proportional to the quantity of galleries in the market.
However, if artists want a successful career in the contemporary art market, they cannot live in the countryside and pretend to become famous without a gallery (at least one) that represents them, according to make their works public, to facilitate curators, art critics and collectors to reach the works easily and to sell them, obviously 1. The emerging artists are the ones that need to find a gap to fill within the contemporary art market and to create from zero a new audience that will follow them and that will support their growth.
The long path to the success is composed mainly by a large development process in which the artists need to improve their skills and their social relations, as this is crucial for their progress, and helps them to scale the stairs to their establishment as artist. Nevertheless, every year thousands of art schools see how tons of artists receive their degree 2, paper that entitles them only to have an official certificate but that misses some of the core points for their future in terms of development. For example, the fact that for being an artist it is not necessary to have a degree in Fine Arts. How to approach an art gallery, how to make a portfolio, or how to do an application for a grant, are only three of the many doubts the emerging artists approach everyday.
Even if it’s true that the number of art galleries has increased in the last years, the number of closures is terribly high as: Today, dealers say they no longer view physical galleries as the primary site of sale and networking. Instead, they name art fairs as the number one venue for meeting new clients, following the internet, according to TEFAF’s 2017 art market report 3. The decade of economic recession and the shift of capital and people within various areas of the world, are determining a crisis in the art world that is paralysing the entire art system, pushing mid-size galleries to drastically reduce their budgets, play a safe game or even close in the worst case scenarios. Moreover, the change in the politic views and investments of always more countries, are determining a decrease of the amount of grants that can help with the survival of galleries.
It could be because the number of sales do not match the expenses the contemporary art gallery has. Nevertheless, artists are still dreaming and the quantity of students that wants to start a career as artist, never stops, so, as a consequence, there is a saturation in the field where the offer overwhelms the demand.
The job of becoming an established artist, or to make of art a real job, is probably one of the most challenging as the emerging artists need to work hard creating new body of works that could interest curators, critics, gallery owners, dealers and mostly collectors.
Even if the attitude of the society towards contemporary art has changed in the last decade, there is still a controversial opinion about the boundaries that the emerging artists are approaching. This is one of the reasons why we can find a variety (not large yet) of organizations that are helping artists with their first steps in their career, in the way that they can understand how to develop their practice and follow their aesthetic path before arriving to the establishment point (this may never happen).
The core of EMERGE, is what I felt was more than needed in the current emerging artist’s situation. They started their path in 2016, with the aim of helping emerging artists within Portugal, taking into consideration the complex issues that the “starters” have within the contemporary art market and giving the opportunity of growing at the same time than learning.
There’s still a hope for emerging artists in our society and we all need to fight for the future of the contemporary art.
1 Abbing, H., (2002). Why are artists poor? Amsterdam (Netherlands) Amsterdam University Press.
2 Boucher, B. (August 12th, 2019). How Does an Artist Get a Gallery Anyway? Here Are 11 Practical Steps That Could Lead to Bona Fide Representation https://news.artnet.com/art-world/how-to-get-a-gallery-1621384 last consulted on: August 14th, 2019.
3 Pownall, R.J.A. (2017). Tefaf Art Market Report Online Focus. Helvoirt (Netherlands) The European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF).
P. 24
Ana Velez
Ana Velez was born in Lisbon, in 1982. She lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal and Madrid, Spain.
Her work was part of important group shows such as Mano-a-Mano and Off-site, Portugal (2019); Past | Present | Future, Austria (2017); Périplos – Arte Portugués de Hoy, Spain (2016); BIS 7.ª Bienal de São Tomé e Princípe, São Tomé and Príncipe (2013).
Her most significant solo exhibitions include Gabinete de dibujos, Valencia, Spain (2018), Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, Lisboa (2016), Bloco103 | Arte Contemporânea, Lisboa (2014), and Galeria Fernando Santos, Oporto (2008).
In her work she has established drawing as a directional tool, inquiring about its multiple material possibilities, which led her to develop her work also in the public space. There she made a series of pictorial interventions on damaged or already vanished buildings.
She addresses themes that go around the concept of identity, based on three ideas: place, memory and body, highlighting place as the container of memory and identity.
She is co-founder of Atelier Contencioso with three other artists, with whom she shares a workspace and authorship of the artistic interventions at Rio Maravilha, Lisbon, Portugal, and the installations Mamba-de-Jameson, on the facade of Pensão Amor, Lisbon, Portugal, and Das Dez ao Meio-Dia Óbidos, Portugal.
P. 26
QUADRATUS
2019
Mixed media
variable dimensions
Photgraphs © César Reis
Ana Velez reflects on an infinite path, a silver road. The rugged surface of the tiles allude to tactile sensations in the viewers, aiming at transporting them to other situations.
For this body of work we take as a starting point the theory of Francesco Careri (1966-), Italian architect, who states that walking can be considered as an autonomous art form, as a primary act of symbolic transformation of the territory and as an aesthetic instrument of knowledge and physical modification of the crossed space that becomes urban intervention. Walking understood as an instrument of architecture and perception of the landscape through the contact that the individual has with this landmark that is the city.
The sidewalks in public roads are, from a purely functional point of view, the element of contact between the physical carrier and the user in their wandering activity. Starting from the idea that the body is an instrument of physical knowledge of the environment, we follow the trail of the cement tiles in a palimpsest reading of it, taking into account the overlapping layers of time and actively considering memory.
P. 28
Ana Wever
Ana Ana Wever was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1975. Lives and works in Lisbon. Wever’s artistic career began in 2010 when she decided to invest in specific training at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (SNBA), Lisbon, Portugal. She consolidated her knowledge in Painting and Contemporary Art History for over five years and currently attends the course of Experimental Atelier.
Ana Wever has regularly exhibited since 2011 and is represented in institutional and private collections, national and worldwide.
Wever’s solo exhibitions were: Fragility Re-search at SNBA, Lisbon, Portugal (2017), FEEL-TRUE (2016) and Fio Condutor (2013) both at the Center of Documentation of the Lisbon City Council, Portugal. The most important group exhibitions were in Portugal: Abel Manta Painting award at the Municipal Museum Abel Manta, Gouveia (2015); A Poética do Visual, an international exhibition at the Gallery of the Museum of Aveiro (2015), and Arte Hoje at SNBA, Lisbon (2014).
Ana Wever was awarded a Visual Arts Grant by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal (2017), and was selected for the Portuguese Emerging Art publication (2017 and 2018), promoted by EMERGE non-profit association, Torres Vedras, Portugal.
Currently, the artist is developing a research and exploration work on the theme of fragility, in a broader sense, establishing analogies between the different “fragilities” of places and societies, for awareness raising and future collective consciousness.
P. 30
FRAGILE STATE
2019
Digital photography
100 x 100 cm (each)
FRAGILE STATE Fragility, or quality of what is fragile, is commonly associated with physical and human condition. The definition of fragility arises also applied to the development process of the “regions”, according to four main indicators of reference – political, social, economic and environmental. In this context, the term “Fragility” acquires a broader sense and refers us to other definitions such as lack of consistency, absence of consolidation and instability of places and societies.
The environmental fragilities are increasingly, once we spend and destroy the resources we have. In addition, nature itself is fragile in its condition.
The “FRAGILE STATE” project aims to address the theme of “environmental fragility” in its natural line, through analogies with human fragilities.
The paths will not be predictable, and the choice of techniques and materials will reveal subtle images, where the apparent simplicity reveals the essence of the theme.
In my exploration process, I will proceed the collection and appropriation of natural elements such as stones, land and others, and the use of maps and polypropylenes.
The idea is to materialize and dematerialize the same object, with the use of hybrid means (photography and video), constructing relational images, digitally captured and manipulated.
The objective is to subtly expose the fragilities of the places, in view of the urgency of activating consciousness for the new challenges that arise.
P. 32
André Silva
André Silva was born in Venezuela 1980. Visual Arts Degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Oporto. His pictorial work explores areas of contact between painting, drawing and installation. On some occasions the pieces are actually appropriating the three-dimensional space and establishing a dialogue with the architecture. Held nine solo exhibitions and participated in more than forty collective exhibitions. He has participated in contemporary art fairs such as: Arte Lisboa (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), Arco Madrid (2007), 03 Volta Show Basel (2007), Munich Contempo (2010, 2011), DE BLOOOM Cologne (2011).
AWARDS AND MENTIONS 2017 Selected for Portuguese Emerging Art book; 2009 Finalist of Fidelidade Mundial Jovens Pintores 2009, at Chiado 8, curator Miguel Wandschneider, Lisbon, Portugal; 2001 Young Artists’01, Municipal Library of Santa Maria da Feira, won the prize in the installation category and an Honorable Mention for his painting work, Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal.
COLLECTIONS Foundation PLMJ, Lisbon, Portugal; Collection Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas – Coleção de Desenhos da Madeira; Colecção Marin.Gaspar; Cac Málaga; Luciano Benetton Collection; Private collections in Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and England.
P. 34
Entre o espaço e o poder Apanha-me se puderes
2018
Flags installation, stitched polyester fabric, variable dimensions.
Drawings made with indian ink, watercolor, graphite, colored pencils, variable dimensions.
Photographs © Daniel Malhão
Resorting to human figure models at scale 1:87 Apanha-me se puderes (Catch me if you can)has as its starting point an archive of images in which the artist seeks to structure a narrative in two-dimensional space, leaving open the construction of a sequence. This series of works is a reflection on current issues such as growing economic difficulties, class inequality and resulting manifestations that impel human action before feelings of injustice. By contrast Apanha-me se puderes (Catch me if you can) addresses ecological issues that are not yet internalized in the human consciousness, appearing man inert and subject to the laws of Nature. This series has begun in 2014 and is still in development. It is composed of drawings, paintings and flags.
P. 38
Atelier Contencioso
Atelier Contencioso is the work space of four women artists: Ana Velez, Joana Gomes, Maria Sassetti and Xana Sousa. Founded in 2015, it emerged from the common need to find a viable work space, as well as from the closeness and parallelism that exists between the artists’ pictorial production.
The works they have been creating, both as collective art interventions and as group exhibitions, set from a site-specific line of thought, considering the place with its specificities. However, this idea of “place” as the centre of production does not comprise in its totality the complexity of the work that has been developed. Contributing with four distinct bodies of work, each common project is loaned a multiplicity of concepts and references which, sometimes, also respond to specific commissions.
Atelier’s work was part of important group shows such as Mano-a-Mano and Off-site, Lisbon (2019), Torre de Madeira, Lisbon (2017), Tudo o que se imagina, Lisbon (2017), Portugal. The artistic interventions include the ones at Rio Maravilha, Lisbon, and the installations Mamba-de-Jameson, on the facade of Pensão Amor, Lisbon, and Das Dez ao Meio-Dia, Óbidos, Portugal.
P. 40
Mano-a-Mano
2019
Mixed media, variable dimensions
Mano-a-mano is an expression that designates a melee combat, where opponents face each other using their own hands.
(…)
The title of the exhibition plays upon the ambivalence of the expression mano-a-mano, its sense of combat and its literal reference to the direct action of manuality. This aspect introduces us to the practice of the four artists. Different nonetheless, the works of Joana Gomes, Maria Sassetti, Xana Sousa and Ana Velez are confronted with a practice of painting within an extended field. It is possible to locate in their works elements of the formal repertoire of Abstraction, which serves to autonomize and specify the pictorial medium, purifying it with grid and monochrome, shaped canvas, repetition and serial progression. In this quadrature of artists, however, the investigation into the conventional limits of painting, as well as its objectual status, is done through the deliberate search for impurity.
From the official vocabulary of Abstraction, Joana Gomes, Maria Sassetti, Xana Sousa and Ana Velez develop a practice deeply linked to manuality, by a mixture of processes, unconventional techniques and materials without previous existence, resulting in textured, humanised and impure abstraction.
Jorge André Catarino, 2019
P. 46
Atelier Ser — Spontaneous Art Movement
Atelier SER – Spontaneous Art Movement Movement was found in 2016 by two Portuguese visual artists, Diogo deCalle and Bruno Lavos Marques. It’s a project that challenge the boundaries of social art and relational aesthetics, using creativity to develop participatory processes of art making and visual communication. It`s a collective that unfolds visual art techniques in order to empower people, claiming the right to citizenship though the creative expression and bringing together the enhancement of common space. ‘Our main aim is to improve society as a united body and to inspire people to cultivate their own autonomous thinking. To transform any citizen of any age, of any nation, into an art-maker as a political act!’ Between public actions and workshops, Atelier SER took part in many cultural events, such as: 2019 Mexe Encontro Internacional de Arte e Comunidade, Porto, Portugal; Festa da Casa da Cerca, Almada, Portugal; 25 Abril 45 anos 45 Artistas, Almada, Portugal; O meu 25 de Abril, Centro Cultural Palácio do Egito, Oeiras, Portugal; 45 anos do 25 de Abril nos Jardins do Palácio de São Bento, Lisbon, Portugal; 2018 Dias da Terra, Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Caminhos da Leitura, Pombal, Portugal; Feira do Livro de Viana do Castelo, Portugal; Fringe Festival, Gothenburg and Lathi, Sweden and Finland; Encontro de Ilustração Braga em Risco, Braga, Portugal; 2017 Social Art Award Book, edition nº1, Berlin, Germany; Festival de Street Art Tons da Primavera, Viseu, Portugal; Urban Art Festival Estau, Estarreja, Portugal; Festas Bairro Intendente, Largo Residências, Lisbon; 2016 Paratíssima, Lisbon; Urbact, Largo Residências, Lisbon.
P. 50
Mapa de Vontades
2018
Collective painting of a map, screen printing on raw canvas.
Variable dimensions
Photographs © Diego Bastos Cunha
Atelier SER was invited by the festival Braga em Risco 2018, to present a live work that engaged art, people and the public space. ‘We wanted to invite people, to paint a collective map as a symbol of community and participatory governance. A space of manifest, individual and collective conscience, that proposes to rethink the values we want for our neighborhood, our city, our country and our planet.’ A large map with 5 X 5 m painted in cotton fabric installed in the public square, presents the streets of Braga city. The first step was to invite each person to give a new name to the streets of the city, writing their wishes and thoughts or even global messages to the society. Every map is united by colors, so the second step was to invite people to experience silkscreen, printing illustrations created by the artists. These illustrations are representations of city´s manifestations of places, infrastructures and people´s activities. The process of painting the map follows the rule of building a self-balanced, cultural, green, healthy and sustainable city based on ‘innovative governance’. Map of Wishes is a project that emerged in 2017, commissioned by Largo Residências and presented at the cultural event Bairro Intendente em Festa. It was an active form of proximity and a tool to listen those who lived, live and transit in a neighborhood that has suffered and continues to suffer one of the highest rates of gentrification in Lisbon.
P. 52
Beatriz Coelho
Beatriz Coelho was born in Oporto, Portugal in 1995. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. She has a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. In 2018, she was selected a finalist and one of the winners of Prémio Arte Jovem Millennium BCP, Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa. In 2019, she was selected finalist of Concurso Jovem Criador. She has regularly participated in exhibitions, including: I will take the risk, curated by Carolina Trigueiros and Tomaz Hipólito, Tomaz Hipólito studio, 2019; Jovem Criador, NOVA SBE, 2019; Prémio Arte Jovem, Águas Livres 8, 2018; Finalistas Pintura 2017, SNBA, 2018; Trilogia de Mundos, Museum of Tapestry of Portalegre, 2016; In 2019, he was in artistic residence at Centro Português de Serigrafia developing an editorial project. Among other participations and in addition to her artistic practice, she collaborates as author of articles for platforms and magazines integrated in the sphere of plastic arts, as is the case of Artecapital. The artistic project that she has been developing part of the practice of painting and extends, from there, to other plastic disciplines, and it can be described as an exploration of a temporal dimension in the practice of painting, from a thematic and procedural point of view.
P. 54
stuck in the clouds
2019
oil on canvas
121 x 101 x 4,5 cm
There are, indeed, three times: the present of past things, the present of present things, the present of future things. (…) [the] three are in some way in the soul and I do not see them in another place: the present of past things is memory, the present of present things is the look, the present of future things is the expectation. St. Augustine, in Confessions XI. The artistic project that I have been developing involves the exploration of a temporal dimension in the practice of painting, from a thematic to a procedural point of view. In the first case (thematic) I am interested in issues that relate ourselves to different times. From the past, topics such as memory, melancholy, anguish and existence. From the future, topics such as expectation. In the second case (procedural) I am concerned with issues inherent in painting itself, which are inevitably associated with its content, as are examples – materiality and density – characteristics that respond to the idea of time in the course of painting. It is in this elastic thread that my work develops, as is the case of “stuck in the clouds” – a kind of nostalgic composition of the future.
P. 56
Cristianne de Sá
For 5 years in Brazil, between 2003 and 2007, shared experiences with photographer and visual Brazilian artist X. This meeting lead her to question the body, space, the relation with the camera and the act of being photographed, as well as the thin line between author and character. From then on, she started to exchange experiences with Brazilian art collector Kaza Vazia participating with them in several artistic residences. In this period, she also invites artists to photograph or film her, therefore making a duo. In 2009, the video desabitada (unhabited) directed by Cristianne de Sá and Pedro David was selected by Fundação do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico de Pernambuco to be exhibited in the 19th Winter Festival of Garanhuns/PE. In 2013, she moved to Boston in the United States, keeps the photographer and buys a camera, continuing her work, usually through a camera. Hence, her way of working is found. In 2016, she moves to Portugal and starts her master’s degree in Contemporary Artistic Creation in the University of Aveiro. In 2017, she exhibits Sala Fria (Cold Room) and in 2019 espaçotraçotempo (space, trace, time), in the Museum of Aveiro. From this, she takes the idea and the experience of image, photographer, camera and body as her leitmotiv, to her work.
P. 60
2019
Video HD
variable duration, mono sound
In white
Notice
In white
In the end
Analogy to life
Of my room
Straight curve geometrics
Leitmotiv
Almost decades
Body
The process
Becoming
If you can look Look
If you can see
Notice
Here
There
In you
P. 64
David Pereira
David Pereira is a Portuguese artist living in London where he studied in the MA Photography at The Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design. In his practice he researches the fundamentals of image creation in the analogue darkroom by using chance as the key compositional principle, light as the medium and colour the subject of his work. With works selected for the Summer Exhibition 2019 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and a solo exhibition in Arles, he participated in group exhibitions in London, Paris, Berlin and Florence.
P. 68
Endurance
2018
C-Print
50 X 60 cm
Colour can be seen in everything and exists, contrary to common understanding of its meaning and expressiveness, independently of any hierarchical order, spiritual or scientific theories. As Matisse once said “colour exists in itself”. Colour more than anything is subjective from a perception point of view since its constancy is aided by the physiological fact that retina adapts to a given illumination. Colour is truly universal and at the same time very particular. In my work colour pulsates with uncertainty. That uncertainty comes from the use of procedures that inhabit the tension between control and chance. This is because the work is done under a specific set of conditions put together to experiment with the limitations of a given system, for example, creating photograms without the use of a camera in total darkness while performing a complex apparatus allowing for uncertainty to emerge. In my work I don’t use cameras of any kind; I create photograms, which are made through the use of light and light-sensitive paper. The series Endurance, introduces the notion of continuously creating colour unique photograms, under growing pressure, during long periods of time. While in total darkness, the creation of the photograms consists in repeatedly folding and exposing the light-sensitive paper, image by image, until it is unbearable to continue.
P. 70
Elisa Azevedo
E lisa Azevedo was born in Oporto, Portugal, in 1996. Is a photographer living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. BA in Multimedia Art — Photography by Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, and post-graduation in Contemporary Photography Discourses by the same institution. Part of collective and solo exhibitions since 2017, such as Body to Body, Arquivo Municipal Fotográfico de Lisboa, Lisbon, 2017, and Flesh Flower, Museu das Artes de Sintra, Sintra, 2018.
Her work lives by a sensible approach to reality, without any constraint to the time, space or subject it inhabits. Themes in her photography are transitivy, identity, gender, sexuality, absence and the body.
P. 72
Flesh Flower
2018
Color inkjet printing on cotton paper
Variable dimensions
Flesh Flower was initiated in the end of 2017 and closed in July 2018. It is a series of 7 photographs with variable dimensions. The title Flesh Flower unfolds in three meanings. With an unambiguous reading (flesh and flower), it refers to the motives present in the images — allusions to the body and the idea of surface, as well as natural elements and shapes which bring us back to a flower, uniting both. In a second layer, Flesh Flower is slang to describe a sexual organ. And lastly, it is a quotation to a plant known as the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum), a type of plant that takes 7 to 10 years until it blooms for the first time, only to stay alive for 12 to 48 hours.
P. 76
Eunice Artur
Master in Contemporary Art Creation by University of Aveiro, with the project “Nomadic wandering – Drawing as reencounter of a place“. Graduated in Visual Arts at ESAD.CR. My work crosses the concept of wandering. At the heart of my research is the existence related to an intimacy which generates encounters and repetitions about travel and drawing. A drawing that in itself wants “error”(‘errare’). The artistic happening demands its delay, and the drawing is a consequence of that delay – direct condition of knowledge. The drawing is seen as immersed in a reality, in his relation with the untimely, a position of appropriation of the unpredictable. When this happens, the destabilizing difference is established, stating itself in becoming (‘devir’) from these differences. The mistake. the chance. The limit. What is the space where the drawing manifests as itself, the time of action and what is affected? In this sense, three-dimensionality makes drawing emerge in a condition that is “expanded” by the act of walking. I assume space-drawing as a living organism, that vibrates in different forms, forming a moving body. What emerges from it? My research involves drawing, photography, video, sculpture, installation, sound and performance. I often work in partnership with musicians, resulting in performances, exploring the relation and fusion of sound and drawing through the world of graphic notation. My work has been presented in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, UK, Canada.
P. 80
Do variado, o variante
2018
Installation with sound system, 54’68’’, stereo, loop, charcoal and pigment drawings on cotton paper.
variable dimensions
The project Do variado, o variante is a graphic notation that comes from the unpredictable, the error and the echo in a space where that encounter occurs. It appears as a proposal that relates the movement and the potency, the depth of a force, of a twofold time, a time that is affected by mediation, pulse and even by itself, when it generates. The echo. In this project I invite seven musicians to establish a relation, a new interpretation, a registration of a voyage, a movement that can be found between the wandering and the memory of walking.
P. 82
Evgenia Emets
Having graduated from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art in 2008, Evgenia creates works on the intersection of sound, visual poetry through artist books, calligraphy, performance, and objects. Born in the USSR and coming from a multicultural background, Evgenia has changed homes and countries many times. Today she lives in Portugal, learning a new language, working on new projects, negotiating the cultural, historical, and environmental legacies of her new home country. Eternal Forest ongoing art project, which started in 2018, when Evgenia moved from London to Portugal, marks a transition towards integration of ecological thinking into her art. The project has been exhibited across Portugal and in the UK (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, King’s College), has been invited to participate at the Bienal de Coruche in 2019. Evgenia’s visual works and artist’s books are in museums, libraries and private collections in Russia, UK, Europe and Japan. Among recent exhibitions are: Eternal Forest, Casa do Artista, Gois, Biblioteca Nacional Portugal, Lisbon; Kima: Voice, V&A Digital Futures, London (2018), A Slice of Time. By Other Means, London; The Wave, Chelsea College of Art, London (2017), Being Silence, Crypt Gallery, London, The Wave, L’abri Fondation, Geneva (2016) Evgenia recently published two artist’s books: Eternal Forest. Artist book, Portugal (2018), Do we have a common language? Artist book, London (2016), both in collection of the British Library.
P. 86
Eternal Forest
2018
Transdisciplinary: film, drawing, artist’s book, participatory experience
Video PAL HD, 16:9, 1920 x 1080p, RGBA color, stereo, 41’00’’
Eternal Forest, ongoing art project, explores the human relationship with forests, biodiversity and the sacred. Looking at a timeline beyond human life – a hundred, a thousand, 10,000 years, how can art be created at this timescale? How can art contribute to creating biodiverse natural spaces which require decades or centuries, to mature and thrive? The project started in 2018 in Góis, Portugal. I worked with local community, recording memories, stories and dreams people have about their forests, – in the context of deforestation, growing monocultures of eucalyptus plantation and human exodus from the central areas of Portugal to the coast or abroad. The project resulted in creating a series of artworks, an artist book and a film, which has been shown in multiple locations all around Portugal. In the film people talk about the aesthetic, spiritual, ecological and socio-economic effects monocultures have in the landscape, the absence of natural forests, while an unbroken link with a ‘feeling’ of a forest appears to be present. Eternal Forest artist book, essential to the project, with poetry in English and Portuguese, is typed on a machine without ink, a blind embossing seen only in special light conditions. The book has an envelope with an imaginary ‘no-borders’ map of the ‘Eternal Forest’ location enclosed and visual poetry calligraphy. Made fully on paper from the abandoned paper factory in Góis.
P. 88
Filipe Vilas-Boas
Filipe Vilas-Boas was born in Portugal in 1981. He is a self-taught media artist currently living and working in Paris. Without being a naive tech utopist or a reluctant technophobe, he explores our use of technology and its ethical and aesthetical implications. His installations, performances and conceptual artworks question the global digitalization of our societies, mostly by merging our physical (IRL) and digital (URL) worlds. His robotic installation The Punishment was already highlighted in the Portuguese Emerging Art 2018 book and recently his works have been shown at Nuit Blanche Paris, the UNESCO, Biennale Siana, Le Cube, French Ministry of Culture, Biennale Némo – Le 104 (FR), Athens Digital Art Festival, Monitor – Heraklion Contemporary Arts Festival (GR), Zaratan, MAAT Museum, Casa Azul (PT) and at the Tate Exchange – Tate Modern (UK).
P. 92
Star Tracks | O Astrofone
2018
3D printing, photography, software, music box ≈ 10 x 10 x 10 cm
video projection: variable, potentially infinite, stereo
Star Tracks is a celestial barrel organ, a meditative and musical interactive projection dealing with deep space exploration and humanity’s quest for meaning and transcendence. Inspired by Ancient Greek Astronomy, the artwork consists of a blend of an antique mechanical system combined with an algorithm which uses the celestial vault as a musical sheet. To the Greeks, the universe was like a machine that ran upon mechanical principles. Principles they applied to mathematics, music and life in general. In the same way, today’s technology – including algorithms and machine learning – like early scientific methodology gives us new tools to look for meaning throughout the world and the universe. But we still have to learn how to benefit from it. Here, according to your speed and your sense of rotation, you can find pure musical gems but also, dissonance and chaos.
P. 94
Francisca Aires Mateus
Francisca Aires Mateus was born in Lisbon, Portugal. She completed her master’s degree in Fine Art Media at the Slade School of Fine Art – University College London with Distinction in 2017.In 2015 she graduated Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and received her Licentiate degree in Violin by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music,London, UK.She has recently been nominated for the Sonae Media Art Prize, which will be awarded in November 2019. In 2018 she was one of the winners of the Portuguese Emerging Artists competition and was also awarded a full scholarship for an artistic residency at the Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2016, she was awarded a full scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and she was one of the winners of the Arte Jovem 2016, Carpe Diem competition.Aires Mateus has participated in several group exhibitions,namely: I Will Take the Risk (Azan, Lisbon 2019), I am Sorry I am Late (Set Set, London2018),BUC BOC(AVA, Hong Kong2018), etc. She has also had solo shows such as One Centimetre Apart in Galeria Águas-Livres 8 and is currently preparing the next ones which will take place in December 2019 at Armário, Lisboa and July 2020 in Casa Azul, Torres Vedras. Aires Mateus has also developed several curation and production projects such as “São Roque”, London and “Casa da Dona Laura”, Lisbon, supported by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. These projects count with the participation of over 90 national and international artists in several group and solo exhibitions.
P. 96
Experiência 3, Estendal
2018
performance
24 strings between woodwork and pegs, contact microphones, amplifier, clothes
The performance presented above, Experiência 3, Estendal is part of the project Dzoing. This project consists in the production of a new instrument – Dzoing – and in the exploration of its sonorous and musical possibilities. Dzoing was built with the intent of creating an instrument that could be inhabited. As it is composed by two wooden structures, cloves and strings stretched between them, Dzoing doesn’t have a body – a reverberatory chamber – which transforms every room where it is installed into that vibrating space. This way, it becomes possible to inhabit the instrument.
P. 100
Frédéric Develay
In the case of Frédéric Develay, it is a strategy to “defer” the meaning and determination of the tautology of conceptual art.
This process then leads to a real ambiguity in the reading of the sentence, while encouraging a potentiality that would hide it physically by closing the box.
The effect of ambiguity can be found again in a large number of pieces by Frédéric Develay for which he made use of a black writing on a black background, or a delicate difference between the textures of background and those of the writing on it.
This gesture is a real intention to break the usual methods that distinguish the meaning of the context.
Hou Hanru, Evelyne Jouanno
Words are passers of delayed perception, sometimes raw material (“An inscription of thirty-seven signs”), sometimes unexpected indications (a greyish anvil naked, naked, naked, heavily silent, on which flashes, such a bar sign or striptease parlor, a blue neon announcing: “Lives and works.” That’s all).
Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux
f the characteristic of the man is the language, Frédéric Develay, from his early work, has questionned the dimension of the written word. It presents a set of works that constitute, as shown in the title of his exhibition “PARA[GRA]PHES”, a new stage of his work on language, the latter being activated and questioned between sign, formula, graph, meaning punctual words and concept.
Giovanni Lista
P. 102
os dias
2018
Canvas, electroluminescent wire, shale
130 x 75 cm
It is a game with the word canvas which means both a tapestry (decoration) and a canvas (art). This country scene suggests a threat, both bright and heavy. Shale comes from the earth and is upward in a form of inversion. Metaphor of the disappearance of species and a certain carelessness.
P. 104
Poema não escrito
2019
Letters, granite, metal suitcase
65 x 50 x 25 cm
Play with paradox at the limit of tautology.
Something is written that contradicts what is written since it is written that the poem is not written.
The suitcase winks at the trunks of Fernando Pessoa, as much as at the museum in a Robert Filiou hat. The suitcase (symbol of travel) is like the case of this gra¬nite stone whose heaviness…
P. 106
Gil Ferrão
Gil Ferrão was born in Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal, in 1996. He has been created between Alentejo, Portugal and the suburbs of greater Lisbon, Portugal. Between 2014 and 2017 he studied Visual Arts (painting) in Évora, Portugal at the School of Arts. He was in a artistic residence at Oficinas do Convento, in Montemor-O-Novo, and was production assistant for Simon Boudvin, in collaboration with Eugénio de Almeida Forum. He also collaborated several times with theater groups that he photographed. At the time, the painting was composed of photographic details, with textures and intensities, which would lead to the beginning of the exploration of sculptural pieces. In 2017 he moved to Caldas da Rainha, where he is taking a Master Degree in Fine Arts, at ESAD.CR. Here he focused on the construction of objects that led to a reflection on the interaction of the public with the work of art. Each work may not have a definite end and suggest a handling by the viewer. One can speak of a social function of art, of the performativity of the work, or of abstract objects that foster the creativity and imagination of those who manipulate them. Exhibits since 2016, where he stand out with the following exhibitions: Imposiçã, Inatel gallery, Évora; Fragmento de uma natureza decadente, Galeria 16, Évora; Apoplexia, Arts Center, Caldas da Rainha; Tempo ao espaço, Casa Bernardo, Caldas da Rainha; integrated the performance cycle Gato Vermelho, Caldas da Rainha.
P. 110
Rolling Art
2019
Plaster, acrylic, aluminum, iron,
variable dimensions
Artistic objects may not have a definite shape, making sense to be presented only in a certain space and time. I always expect the inevitable in the development of each work, accepting the accident and the subsequent decomposition, or tranformation in the shape of the object. The spectator is accepted in this process of metamorphosis of each work. I accept the physical interaction between the public and the work of art. A reflection on the actions of the spectator on each object is carried out and new forms of creation and composition never thought by me as artist and producer are taken. The practitioner is part of the work as soon as a relationship is established between both. An obsolete object is appropriated and altered to become abstract and promote new sinergies in the imagination of the manipulator.
P. 112
Hugo Lami
Hugo Lami was born in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1994. He is a Portuguese artist who lives and works between London and Lisbon. His artistic project, based on sculpture, painting and installation, explores a poetic anxiety related to the future of the human species. It is about the physical and cultural survival of one, in a world dominated by invisible systems that threaten the essence of freedom. Lami conducts material experiments of both artificial and natural forms. The narratives built reveal unexpected relations to the science fiction film industry and the game culture, which playfully reflect a hedonistic mind-set instigated by capitalism. MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London, 2017 / 2019 Guest Student at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. 2016 / 2017; Degree in Painting at Lisbon University, Portugal. 2012 / 2016; People’s Choice Award, VIA Arts Prize, Brazilian Embassy, 2019; Dissertation Distinction, RCA, 2019; Exhibitions: Group Show Residency Program Competition, Muse 269, London, UK, 2019; Digital God, Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2018; Work in Process, MUTE art gallery, Lisbon, Portugal, 2018; Klangkörper, Antichambre, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2017; Viga. Quadrum gallery, Lisbon, Portugal, 2017; Digital Display What is the Future of Art?, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2016; A Day, Gallery Graça Brandão, Lisbon, Portugal, 2016; Contemporary Crisis, Bunkerkirche, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2016; Shadows of an Essence, UNL, Monte da Caparica, Portugal, 2015.
P. 116
UPLOAD YOUR DREAMS
2019
Mixed media
variable dimensions
Under the name of the fictitious company “Futuroon”, material experiments are conducted through the use of biotic, abiotic, mineral, vegetable, animal and man-made elements. The series of works under the project “Upload your Dreams” investigate how climate change and technology affect spatial and social interactions, personal feelings and the perception of one’s identity and time regarding the use of new media. To achieve this goal, testing of various materials that relate to both the past and the future will come into contact within various ‘clashes’ of artificial and natural material / subject matter, in which the objects objective is subverted, by challenging their connections to their cultural, environmental and economic systems. Using methodologies and pedagogical strategies and constructive associations, these ‘confrontations’ intend to deconstruct pre-conceptualized patterns of knowledge that may lead to a clue on how to guarantee the cultural survival of human beings, without compromising their identity to the invisible structures that threaten the essence of freedom.
P. 120
Hugo Paquete
Hugo Paquete was born in 1979. Research grant, (FCT) Ph.D student: Doutoramento em Média-Arte Digital. Aberta University and Algarve University, Portugal. Master in Contemporary artistic Creation, (UA, 2014). (CIAC): Center for Research in Arts and Communication, University do Algarve, University Aberta. And in the (ID+ [UA /DeCA) Group: Praxis and Poiesis: from arts practice towards art theory, Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, Aveiro University. He was an artist in residence at the ZKM / Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, IMA | Institute for Music & Acoustics, developing research on sound spatialization and acousmatic music. In his research, Paquete addresses notions such as space, noise, error, and glitch. He critically analyze the related subjects of sound art in sound studies and in digital art that contribute to the post-digital aesthetics. And the regimes of perception mediated by technology.
P. 122
Obscure Radiation
2018
Computer, sampler, inductor microphones, solar panels, video projectors, motion sensors, metal structures, fabrics and other materials, variable dimensions, 30 minutes up to 1 hour long audio visual improvisation, Dolby 5.1.
Obscure Radiation is developed around concepts such as territorial sonification, technological unpredictability, systems and electromagnetic spectra. This work is achieved by transforming the light of the surrounding space and electrical amplitudes into sound events and composition material, manipulated in real time in a systematic musical and visual performative experimentation. Superposition of registers of electromagnetic fields generated in the local context as elements of power and intangibility, which represent the electromagnetic sub-landscape of the techno-cultural network society. Underlining the cognitive phenomena around the use. The objective is to develop a work that expresses the immaterial dimensions of reality, where order and indeterminism act as forces to build an experience that is built on the threshold of noise and silence. This musical performance and Multimédia project has is first presentation and develop of the project was based in Valladolid in Lava: Laboratorio de las Artes integrated in the project CreArt (Network of Cities for Artistic Creation) and European cultural fund as a resident artist. Supported by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation fund for the arts.
P. 126
Ilana Copque
Ilana Copque was born in 1989 in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil). Her artistic interest is grounded in her relationship with photography, especially with documentary photography, which she initiated as autodidact during her bachelor degree in Journalism and Multimedia. In 2014 and after a course in contemporary art, she developed what is considered to be her first artistic productions. By 2018, she became a master in Contemporary Art Creation by the University of Aveiro. From her search for a glimpse of the “spaces between spaces”, from the regular photographic exercise of re-signification of daily life, Ilana began to distill in the form of art installations the perceived appearances, the relations triggered from the experiences due to their transfers and necessary pauses to consolidate places. In her most recent works, because of her nomadic life, the perception and memory are pillars of a possible dwelling in the fluidity of a constant shift. In 2018, she held a solo-exhibition “The Third Margin: Experiences of a Living” (2018) in the University of Aveiro. In the same year, she participated of the collective exhibition “Àgora” in the Santa Joana Museum, in Aveiro. In 2016 she was part of the Digital Art Exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center Archipelago, in São Miguel – the Azores, and, in 2015, she participated of the collective exhibition of the Sertão Photography Festival (Bahia – Brazil).
P. 130
A Terceira Margem: Experiências de Um Habitar
2018
A Casa na Árvore (House on the Tree), steel, cardboard, cement, repair putty, vinyl on wood and acrylic, 155 x 55 x 55 cm
No Canto, Curva (In the Corner, Curves), paper, cardboard, vinyl on glass, wood, iron, fluorescent lamp, 55 x 55 x 100 cm
Àgua Levada (Water under the Bridge), paper, cardboard, PVC, steel, iron, mirror, 200 x 200 x 90 cm
This series emerges from a personal search for a dwelling that escapes the codes of territorialization, something possible that is constantly refashioned in the experience of the living. This perspective is opposite to the traditional notion of dwell, which embraces the idea of permanence. “The Third Margin: Experiences of a Dwell” establishes itself as a place of power, a becoming that is recreated in the experiences. Inst. 1º The Treehouse – I regurgitated places like pillars of a shelter in the flow. The walls, instead of boundaries, are changed in lines: infinity. The house is a body rooted in experiences. It makes my feelings concrete and exceeds me to harbor others, and echoes in the lived world. It hosts mobility and pause, the uncertainty to be. Inst. 2º In the Corner, Curve – The body, huddled in a corner, reminds me the animals that shrink in their shells. Thus, the body shrinks to open itself to the imagination. The corner is the exterior of my interior, that inhabits me when I inhabit things. Inst. 3º Flowing Water – In the middle of my way, I recognize the stretch. Not rarely, I crossed the river; from so much coming and going, frequency. From the ephemeral I kept meanings: a blur, a portrait of a movement. The reunion of pictures from different landscapes is what forms this place in suspense. Today, as before, I passed, but it was the river that crossed me: AN-TU-Ã. I saved the name, as a sounding horizon. I Re-cognize and add the piece for future fictions.
P. 132
Lara Portela
Lara Portela was born in 1982. Studied Fine Arts at ESAD in Caldas da Rainha and did the Maumaus Independent Study Program. Was a forming member of Center for Performative Arts at ESAD-CR, which directed between 2004 and 2006. In 2009, joined the Teatro do Vestido team and in 2014 started the Festival A Porta where coordinates the Visual Arts department. Much of her work is developed from personal and extraneous archives, researching on memory and working with real and fictional narratives, crossing the visual and performative arts. Yellow Dress, performance, Zaratan Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); Do you or do I start? (with Nelson Melo), installation, drawing and sculpture, Arquivo’s Bookstore Gallery, Leiria, Portugal (2017); Exodus, performance, Eletricidade Estética, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal (2016); You Flooded me, installation, Atelier 22A, Lisbon (2015); Fabião: negatives, positives and other stories (with Nelson Melo) artistic residence at the Museum of Image in Movement, Leiria (2014); Gloria meets the underground, installation, Corner Theater, Bergen, Norway, (2013); 17 considerations on error, installation, Torre do Tombo National Archive, Lisbon (2011); of heroes is hell full, (collective) installation and performance, Plataforma Revolver, Lisbon (2010); Arminda (collective) installation and performance, Lisbon Goethe Institut (2009); Earth Salt, (collective) House of Arts of Tavira, Portugal (2007); Come Tomorrow and Bring Your Friends Only I Can Meet Them, Jeleni Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic (2007).
P. 136
Seres que outrora foram humanos
2019
oil on photographs
15 x 20 cm and 20 x 30 cm
Beings that were once human derives from the research on archive images and is a series of oil paintings on photography, digitally manipulated. It has as its starting point the on concept of ugly, monstrous and grotesque, but it is inscribed in a poststructuralist language of appropriation, re-signification of the image, and reaction to the overproduction of images. At the same time seeks “the banal monstruosity” (Jose Gil), which comes after centuries of representation of fantastic beings – from mythology to teratology, without forgetting Freud and his influence in questioning the humanity of contemporary man. They are pictures that were, and a painting that is. A play between past and present, between photography, digital manipulation and painting – from which arises an image that is neither new nor old, that already existed before existing, in an extension of time, space and matter. “Beings that were once human” brings together a series of ideas and concepts present in my body of work, such as the attempt to inventory the world, present in the work of Borges or Pérec, the “immense dictionaries” of Barthes, the archive and library of W. Benjamin, and the connetion of this with a spirituality of the order of the sacred, as Krzysztof Pomian says about invisibilty: “It is situated in its own time, or outside the passage of time, in eternity itself.”
P. 138
Laura Vitorino Rebelo
Laura Vitorino Rebelo was born in Funchal, Portugal, in 1985, visual artist and farmer. Lives and works in Alcáçovas, Alentejo. Master in Artistic Practices in Visual Arts and Licensed in Visual Arts by the University of Évora. Exhibits regularly since 2014. Of the individual exhibitions stand out: Subtle Landscape, Casa da Avenida, Setúbal, Portugal (2019); Abstract Landscapes, House of Culture, Comporta, Portugal (2018); OffarqLisboa, Barros & Bernard, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); There are more seas than roses except for rare exceptions, House of Culture, Comporta, Portugal (2018), (Un)habit Landscapes, Casa da Luz Museum, Funchal, Portugal (2017); Around, Pátria Interiors, Lisbon, Portugal (2014). She participated in several collective exhibitions, including Opposites, Eugénio de Almeida Forum, Évora, Portugal, (2017); Rotterdam International Art Fair, Laurensekerk, Rotterdam, Holland (2016); and Périplos – Portuguese Art of Today, Centro de Arte Moderna of Málaga, Spain (2015). Her work is included in the public and private collections, Casa da Luz Museum (Portugal), Luciano Benetton Collection (Italy) and Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Málaga (Spain). The artistic practice is based, in memories of the landscape. It intends to convey the importance of living in the rural environment in which she lives. Having the horizon line as the beginning of the whole artistic process; the colours of the sky, the relief, the texture of the Landscape and the way these elements relate and change throughout the day.
P. 140
Untitled
2019
Portuguese Faience
9 x 31 x 38 cm
This abstract landscapes project is based on memories of landscapes of the Island of Porto Santo. Having the horizon line as the beginning of the whole artistic process; the colours of the sky, the relief, the texture of the landscape and the way these elements relate. Therefor, I’ve tried to understand the colours and the movements of the sky, the sea and the land of this small island, looking for the essence of the landscape itself, leaving the risk and accident of the relationship between the medium (raw glazes) and the surface (Portuguese Faience) to flow in favor of the resulting object. Hoping to offer something unique and unique, where in each piece, each observer can imagine a different landscape.
P. 142
Ludmila Queirós
Ludmila Queirós was born in Portugal. Student of the Master of Contemporary Artistic Creation (ua.pt); Information Systems Management, Degree, (esce.ips.pt); Her work aims to be a place of poetic permeability between the arts, communicated through the visual arts / installation / performance, a place where there is a search for the space between light and shadow itself. Presented and published articles at the Conferences [AVANCA | CINEMA 8th International Conference Cinema – Art, Technology, Communication] and [# 18.ART: ADMIRABLE ORDER OF THINGS: Art, Emotion and Technology ”] and participated as a speaker at TedX 2015 Coimbra , which had as its motto “We must change” with the communication “Challenging Challenges”. And participated in several Exhibitions (Collective and Solo) with presentations of his artwork.
Exhibitions: Overlap, Atelier Eliseu, Lousã, Portugal, 2019; Dos Modos Are Born Things, Festival of Art Makers, Cineteatro Alba, Albergaria-A-Velha, Portugal, 2019; The Praise of Slow, Cultural Space of the Union of Parishes of Souselas and Button, Souselas, Portugal, 2019; Mulher’ES, Santa Joana Museum, Aveiro, Portugal, 2019; The Miller’s Way [I wish I was the dust of the road], Cineteatro Alba, Albergaria-A-Velha, 2019; Approaching Chaos, Tondela Cultural and Recreational Association, Tondela, Portugal, 2019; Timeline BH, International Video Art Festival, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2018; Agora, Santa Joana Museum, Aveiro, 2018; Informal Territories, Cantanhede House of Culture, Cantanhede, Portugal, 2017; 12 months in tips, Cineteatro Messias, Mealhada, Portugal, 2016; Looking Back | Moving Forward , Santa Clara Gallery, Coimbra, 2016; Dysfemism, Cloisters of Cantanhede City Hall, Cantanhede, 2016; DesFio., Coimbra Conservatory of Music, Coimbra, 2015; Mind The Gap, Casa da Esquina, Coimbra, 2015; The Shadow of Absence, Operator’s Voice School, Lisbon, Portugal, 2015; SO´Mente a Poesia, Alves & Silvestre Arts Grocery Store, Coimbra, 2015.
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Terra Sem Sombra: Ceridween
2018
Vídeo PAL HD, 1920 x 1080p, 16:9 TV format, color RGBA, stereo
70 x 70 x 40 cm
What are in fact the frontiers between the Public and the Private in the contemporary world, this is one of the possible reflections for the analysis of this project. The spectator takes the place of a dimension of transgression by taking part in fruition, an ambiguous place between the desire to search the life of others and the notion of ethics and morality that may lie dormant in a half-space encouraged by the present device. What is private (private) and public? To peer into the life of others, flaps of memory itself, an ephemeral memory, short, without ballast. A life / memory made up of images that are confused between the private space and the public, between the personal (own) and the outside in a virtualized world (connected by a network without skin). There are more and more “windows” where we can look, and in this “place” the experience of relationships resembles more and more static, visual noise. – Development / Applied Methodology This work is an audiovisual installation consisting of: • A 3’00 video (looped), consisting of 288 different videos of 15 seconds each (looped until the end of the 3’00 edition). All videos are in Black and White, and the space between them is black. This final video had to be composed in several phases (several different editing projects: six), since the videos were quite a lot of editing, it was very slow. It has been edited just like all the other videos covered in this Report in Adobe Premiére Pro CC 2017 software.
P. 146
Terra Sem Sombra: Alegoria
2018
Vídeo PAL HD, 1920 x 1080p, 16:9 TV format, color RGBA, stereo.
70 x 70 x 40 cm
What We live a constant allegory, representing reality in an abstract way through images of concrete reality.
The idea of Plato’s Cave is still applicable to the present, but we live “out of the cave”, but we continue to look within, experiencing the world through its “shadows” (interpretations alien to reality through proclaimed indispensable Virtuality that is the Contemporary Life).
- Development / Applied Methodology
This work is an audiovisual installation consisting of: A box base, built by 36 raw wood frames, with prints on parchment paper inside each frame of 36 different QR codes that point to 17 questions, 17 answers and two fixed links (one from my brief biography and another from the synopsis of this project) with acrylic top lined underneath with parchment paper;
In the middle on the top of the base box is a tube (parallelepiped) on parchment paper with a wooden frame that allows / suggests to look at its bottom;
Inside the base box is a video projector, projecting a video of images of atomic bombs and their effects (without human or humanized presence) and with the sound of marching troops and birds. This projector projects to a mirror that later emits the image to the upper top of the box base and can be seen through the tube (parallelepiped) described above.
In the surrounding environment are photographs of matches, all different.
P. 150
Maísa Champalimaud
Maísa Champalimaud was born in 1987 in Lisbon, where she lives and works. In recent years, the artist has dedicated to exhibiting individually and collectively, also involving herself in public projects. The shows and commercial projects highlighted in 2018 are: the colaboration with the Portuguese brand Monarte creating prints for several pieces of clothing, as well as creating and auctioning a four-hand painting alongside an artist with motor deficiency for Salvador Association. In 2017: are Devaneios oníricos at Casa Pau-Brasil; Sobre Livros at Braga’s Book Fair, Braga; Paperworks IV at Galeria Belo-Galsterer; the creation of the wine label of Xutos and Pontapés; the development of a lamp integrated in Dar luz a esta causa to be auctioned for a social cause organized by the non-profit association CAPITI. In 2016: Between Phases at Espaço Andrade Corvo; Between Distance and the Present at the Edge Group; the creation of a mural for the restaurant El Clandestino; and an intervention in a bathroom at LX Factory. Champalimaud works are today in private collections namely: PT Foundation; CCA lawyers; Edge Group; AMI Foundation; Ex Libris Building; Internacional Design Hotel; The House; Abreu lawyers; Opus 14 Gallery; Rebelo de Sousa & Associates; Private lawyers; PARTAC S.G.P.S, Light Blue Apartments.
P. 152
Sobre Livros
2018
Acrylic on books
variable dimensions
Since Gutenberg, a book can be seen as a multiple format, meaning its pages reproduce the same content over time. In the same way, the artist opted to multiply art, bringing literature closer to painting by creating three series. Sobre Livros (on books) series is a way of continuing the work of Maísa Champalimaud with the objective of exploring literary characters over multiples of books. For the artist, in search of exalting the maximum interpreters of the Portuguese language, this idea arose of portraying them on the basis of their support – the books. In 2014 the artist launched the first series entitled In Lusophony portraying renowned writers from Portuguese-speaking countries. Two years later, when invited to decorate the apartment walls of a historic building integrates at the local accommodation, she launched the Ex-Libris collection. In 2018 the artist repeated the feat for a private collector creating Sobre Livros (On Books).
P. 154
Márcio Carvalho
Márcio Carvalho is a visual artist and independent art curator, based between Berlin and Lisbon. Carvalho holds a Master’s Degree in Performative Arts at the HZT / UDK Berlin and Master degree in Visual arts in visual arts at ESAD, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. His artistic practice is focused primarily on collective technologies and practices of remembering and how they influence the individual and collective memory of past events. His work reflects on urban settings and their historical consciousness, challenging the urban representational memories that still commemorate imperial/colonial Histories. Carvalho uses performance art, drawing, photography and video as decolonial tools to raise a need to claim a ownership of a space that is a public, common good, to tune it into a 21st century societies that praise democratic values of freedom and equality. He has presented his art work extensively in four different continents notably at Ravy Biennial (Cameroon), Thessaloniki Biennial (Thessaloniki), Berlin Biennial (Berlin), Curitiba Biennial (Curitiba), Gemäldegalerie (Berlin), Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo), Live Biennial (Vancouver), Tanz in August (Berlin), Steirischer Herbst Festival (Graz), Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum (Turku), 7a11d Festival (Toronto), Project Arts Centre of Contemporary Art (Dublin), Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin).
P. 158
Falling Thrones – Sporting Histories
2019
Micro pigment ink and acrylic on paper
170 x 150 cm
Falling Thrones – Sporting Histories uses Olympic games and their structures of power to compete for another stories and other peoples to be remembered. Each athlete used in the drawings is a woman or man that fought in the past against colonial rulers and Imperial injustices. The drawings show them sporting statues and their hegemonic histories and resisting Western dominant narratives.
P. 160
Margarida Paiva
Margarida Paiva was born in 1975 in Portugal. She is a visual artista living in Oslo working with film and photography. In 2007, she completed her Master degree at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and has earlier studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto and Art Academy in Trondheim. Her video works have been shown widely in exhibitions and international festivals. Recent work includes an interest in environmental thinking and aims to explore relationship between human and nonhuman existences in a poetic way. Recent exhibitions include group shows at Muratcentoventidue Contemporary Art Gallery, Bari, Italy, Gallery MELK, Oslo, Norway, Screen City Biennial in Stavanger, Norway, and solo exhibitions at MIRA Contemporary Art Space in Porto, Portugal and Oslo Intercultural Museum, Norway. The short film Soul Blindness (2019) received a Honourable Mention at FUSO 2019, International Video Art Festival in Lisbon, Portugal.
P. 164
Soul Blindness
2019
videoart, video PAL HD, 1920 x 1080p, grayscale, stereo
A quiet forest. Mist wanders through the air like a lost soul. Ghosts of dead animals haunt the landscape. Inspired on ancient animist beliefs in which plants, animals and places all possess a distinct spiritual essence, the film points to our growing inability to recognise that other creatures are sentient and mindful beings as we are.
P. 166
Nádia Duvall
The Portuguese-Algerian artist born in 1986 develops a body of work which is essentially auto-biographical, reflecting on multiple current problems from philosophy, religion and politics. She proposes an hibridism which merges painting, literature, performance, sound, video and installation. She graduated in Visual Arts at ESAD School of Art and Design, Portugal, 2008. In that same year, she was awarded the BANIF REVELATION Prize. In 2010 she won a D.G. Art grant supported by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture for PROJECT SKIN. In 2016, she won the Young Creators Prize awarded by the National Cultural Center with a sculptural/prosthesis project TITHEMI. In 2016 she was one of the selected for the shortlist Paula Rego Award. In 2018 finished her Painting Master Degree in the School of Fine Arts, Lisbon University, with distinction. The research and MA thesis was based on her own art work and the concepts of skin, heteronym, bachelor machines and process. The artist also developed the project CAVE in which the studio was open to the public highlighting the rooms of each of the ten heteronyms. The studio was sponsored by BANIF bank from 2008 to 2017. In 2019 she started her PhD in Fine Arts at FBAUL and is one of the Portuguese artists who won the Young European Creation Award 2019. Also this same year is presented in the book Private Visit by Dalila Pinto de Almeida and Manuel Falcão with the support of the EDP Foundation.
P. 168
VISGRAAT
2019
Mixed media on acrylic glass and light
170 x 130 cm
The inner experience of man is given at the moment when, by tearing chrysalis, man is conscious of tearing himself, not the opposite resistance from without. A huge revolution takes place when one is able to overcome the objective consciousness that the walls of chrysalis limited. — BATAILLE, Georges – O Erotismo, edição ilustrada, Lisboa: Antígona, 1954, p. 34.
Beyond any memory, a sensation comes through instead. First the falling body then the clash. The feeling of a broken body completely scattered. Pain and ecstasy. Memories are layers, repressed to a thin membrane of mnemonic debris. This accumulated and heavy skin dwells between the conscious and the unconscious. The memories are still there, but they have turned into something else: a nonsense figure, a vile monster with the appearance of a wicked man who clings wickedly to his body. My name is Odette and it’s one of my heteronyms. As we look at these paintings, our body initially repels them. Recognizes the pain and anguish in the skin with a viscous and transparent appearance. It is a body that has been cut and pierced. The continuous millennial effort to delimit us offers a sense of agony and discomfort, and perhaps this is where something similar to masochism emerges. The desire to feel the pain that transcends the flesh makes this a scene of terror and agony (eg the work of Gina Pane and Vito Acconci). Suicide, as its extreme, is when the flesh confronts the spirit head on. A dizzying rise in the decline of the soul. In these attacks on the body, so close to death, there is a liberation and a strange eroticism. Interestingly, this is for Bataille the “… Approval of life even in death itself.” In this ecstasy, there is no longer outer and inner. It is a light body, full and without organs. The sense of liberation is blue and, perhaps like Klein’s monochromatic, empty and complete, near a heavenly mother. The discomfort we feel impels us to that abyss of light and darkness. Light is the reborn body of a new womb. VISGRAAT, with its struggling spine, is a Phoenix (once a centipede Lacraia) in a violent birth. Finally the monster disappears and we feel a gentle breeze and the warmth of an unnamed love.
Text by Emily Ham
P. 170
Paula Prates
Paula Prates was born in 1975 in Almada, Portugal. She lives and works in Lisbon. Holds a Master Degree in Visual Arts at Central Saint Martins, College of Art & Design of the University of the Arts, London (2003), and a degree in Painting at Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universityt of Lisbon (2000). Paula Prates exhibits on a regular basis since 1990. Among her individual exhibitions are: Intrusão, MUTE – Plataforma de Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2017); Pregas, fissuras e mundos paralelos, Galeria Bangbang, Lisbon (2015); Ensaio sobre a Ruína – Parte 2, Espaço megarim-adn, Lisbon (2011); Ensaio sobre a Ruína, Espaço Round the Corner, Teatro da Trindade, Lisbon (2011); Clivagem, Galeria Sopro, Lisbon (2011); Intervenção pictórica, site-specific installation, Fábrica Braço de Prata, Lisbon (2010); O caos-nuvem, Galeria Sopro, Lisbon (2009). Of her collective exhibitions, the following stand out: Panorama 2018, Le Consulat, Lisbon (2018); 5 artists / 5 project rooms, CarpeDiem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon (2017); Diáfano, Galeria Bangbang, Lisbon (2015); Landscape, Galeria Bangbang, Lisbon (2014); Espaço arte@ulis 2011, Rectory of the University of Lisbon (2011); Sala do Veado – Cabinet d’Amateur – 1990/2010, Sala do Veado, Museu Nacional de História Natural, Lisbon (2010); White Garden, Pavilhão 28, Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico, Lisbon (2010); Drawing by Numbers, Espaço Avenida 211, Lisbon (2009); Estruturas 1:1, with Miguelangelo Veiga, Sala do Veado, Museu Nacional de História Natural, Lisbon (2009).
P. 174
Despojos
2018
Printing on 100% cotton fine art paper
56 x 75 cm and 112 x 150 cm
Wherever there seems to be a chain of events, he [the angel of history] sees only one and only catastrophe, which does not cease to heap ruins on ruins and throws them at his feet. (Walter Benjamim in Theses on the philosophy of Story). The term ruin comes from the Latin “ruin”, meaning an act or effect of collapse, a collapse or a destruction, a rest or a debris. In a figurative sense the word aims at something that is decadent, degraded. There is even a plant with this name that appears in the holes or crevices of the walls and cliffs, surviving only in these interstitial spaces, sheltered and difficult to access. The concept of ruin lives in an ambiguous status: on the one hand, it is a tangible vestige of man, but on the other is a space that lives without its presence, accumulating traces, marks over time. It is a space where man has no place. The time factor and its devastating power is the key to everything, and it is only through it that we can reconcile ourselves with the tragedies that populate our memory. The terrible becomes sublime. I am left with an unanswered question: without time and without memory, will there be ruin?
P. 176
Pedro Forte aKa Corvvs (Corvus)
Born in Lisbon, Pedro Forte studied Graphic Design at Escola Artística António Arroio. In addition to design it is also interested by illustration and tattoos having worked also in a studio as freelance tattoo artist. His style can be described as extremely graphic and dark in certain ways, he explore themes such as portraits, the naked, the queer and underground world, and the oniric. In traditional illustration uses as technique the cross-hatching, based on the engraving technique but using a bic pen (ballpoint). In terms of design and digital illustration it is very versatile, likes to explore and discover techniques due to experimentation of artistic practice. Whether it is on paper or on the computer, red is his reference colour, being a warm, strong, impactful and brutal color in its essence. As for the artistic name (corvvs) comes from “corvus”- scientific name of the species of crows. The crow is not only one of the more intelligent birds, but it is also one of the animals with more symbology throughout the world, be it negative or positive, besides that, they are also considered the “messengers”, which is through this characteristic, relates to the style and work of the artist.
P. 178
Buried Crows
Buried Crows is a personal and individual project comic creation in current development. The concept revolves around a group of friends that begins to be pursued by “shadows” and nightmares, that there seems to be no motive or meaning at first sight, but even then, they will have to find out the reason for these events. The comics are based on the artist’s personal life, the characters are not fictitious, nor most of the connections, speeches and events described by images. At its creation only two colors are used, in addition to the high contrast of black-white, which are grey, that serves for everything that is shadow of objects, and red for alerts and for “blood”, causing more shock and a more interesting visual aesthetic. As for the organization of the image’s squares and the “balloons”, they are also strategically organized by appealing to a more modern design to create a visually stunning beauty.
P. 188
Rodolfo Gil
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, where he lives and works. Studied Philosophy and History. In his artistic training attended the Contemporary Photography graduation at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon, studying also at Ar.Co and Atelier de Lisboa. At the professional level he is a sound designer, having worked in theater, cinema and documentary. In his photographic project seeks to explore relations between the sound and image, taking also the transformations and dynamics of the urban space as a recurring theme. More recently he has dealt with themes related to the notion of sense of place, exploring different approaches to an idea of “home”, focusing in the psychological dimensions of the everyday environment. He has participated in about 25 exhibitions since 2014, in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Guarda, Salamanca, London, Budapest and Athens. In 2018 he won the 1st prize in the “Douro Património Contemporâneo” Competition awarded by the Douro Museum.
P. 182
Outubro
2019
Digital inkjet printing
30×20 cm
A narrative about intimacy, in the course of the passage of days in the space that is inhabited. This series of images, comprises fragments of stories, fictions, which raise questions (never entirely revealed), projecting the imagination of the viewer on what happens inside, showing the psychological dimension of the place and of the daily environment. Here, we cross past and present, revealing silences and dissent, in a slow passage of time. According to Georges Perec in The Species of Spaces, “as we think and build artistic production on the mundane and mundane things of everyday life, we are talking about what we are and how we live.” Weariness, routine, disharmony and inability to communicate, which accompany and submerge us (and what they may mean), are the focus of this work.
P. 186
Rodrigo Vila
R odrigo Vila was born in 1980. He studied communication design – Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. He started to work in plastic arts on 2010. His work is based on the representation of the city by its urban mesh and patterns in painting and various photographic techniques. Fragmented city memories in a nostalgic vision and with a sense of appreciation of the places. His works have already been presented in several group and solo exhibitions, namely: Memory Mechanisms, Lisboa Story Center, Lisbon, Portugal (2019); Sucessões Divergentes, Kaleidoscope bulding, Lisbon (2017); O padrão Irregular, curated by Daniela Zurita, Isabel Gómez and Rui Luís, FBAUL Gallery, Lisbon (2015); Detalhes Invisíveis, Round The Corner, Lisbon (2012); Life’s a User Manual, curated by Luisa Santos, Round The Corner, Lisbon (2010).
Most of his artworks are currently in private collections.
P. 188
Mecanismo da Memória
2019
Super 8 movie film photography
60 x 90 cm (each)
The memory of a city is based on the architecture, monuments and the places of that city. The way we interpret our experiences in space and how we keep the images before our eyes, becomes our reality, through which we attribute meanings to our physical world. In the pursuit of a representation of a memory of the city, the question arises as to the most appropriate means of translating this analogous city. Rodrigo Vila uses super-8 film in a parallelism with the various images that we keep in our memory. We have the exact moment stuck in our thoughts spread out in countless images per second. They are photographs, they are movies and part of us controls the speed that the city, stopped in time, develops in our memories. Using a Super-8 camcorder, and old and already expired films, Rodrigo Vila captures images of the city that he later develops, through a craft process based on coffee, photographs and enlarges them as memories that arise and grow in our mind. Faded images that become more or less clear as we look at them, where our brain adds detail and context. As in a journey through time, where each image can send us to a different time from the captured one, in an attempt to attribute our own memories to the images of this analogous city.
P. 192
Rui Pedro Jorge
Rui Pedro Jorge, born in 1987. Lives and work between Bucharest and Lisbon. Finished his studies in Fine Arts – Painting, in 2010 at FBAUP – Oporto, PT, in 2008 he holds his Erasmus studies at AVU –Prague, CZ. In 2019 received the Fundação Millennium bcp Emerging Art Award. Artist in Residence at the Bilboarte Foundation in 2011, which culminated with his solo project Tempos de Poeira at the foundation gallery. From his exhibitions are to enhance: É um longo caminho, MCO Arte Contemporânea, Oporto, Portugal; Breves passagens, Galeria 111, Lisbon, Portugal; Estampa 2015, JosédelaFuente, Madrid, Spain; From the inside out, JosédelaFuente, Santander, Spain; Copi Copi, Galeria 111, Oporto; Século XXI 10 Anos, CAMB, Algés, Portugal, among others.
His work is present at the collections: Fundação Millennium bcp, Portugal; Fundación Bilbaoarte, Spain; Manuel de Brito, Portugal; DKV Seguros, Spain; Colección Los Bragales, Spain; Colección Navacerrada, Spain; Benetton Foundation, Italy; CAC Malaga, Spain.
P. 194
Obor
2019
Acrylic and oil on canvas
162 x 130 cm
Millennium BCP Foundation collection
Rui Pedro Jorge’s universe focuses on the study of space and spatial representation. Being the main aspect of his works, it appears prominently as common landscapes, stripped of their meaning and reduced to their basic existence. Raw constructions, undefined plants and remnants of violence fuse together in the artist’s attempt to create an image – a space where forms become protagonists and generate their own narratives, a scene in which their pictorial actors walk across the border of abstraction.
P. 196
Sara Ramone
Sara Ramone was born in 1994 in Viana do Castelo. Graduated in Fine Arts – Sculpture by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and in 2015 studied at Academy di Belle Arti di Bologna in Italy under the Erasmus + program. In 2017 she worked as an assistant to Sculptor Pedro Wirz and received an honorable mention in photography at the 16th Aveiro Young Creator 2017 Contest. Since 2014 she has participated in several collective exhibitions, among which Rente at Dentro Gallery, Porto; Bucha at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto; and Sargaço D’arte, at the Old Town Hall in Viana do Castelo. In 2018 she held an artistic residence at the House of the Artist in the scope of Biennial of Cerveira Art Foundation that resulted in a collective exhibition Em residência ou talvez não…; she was selected for the Portuguese Emerging Art Book 2018, by the jury Ana Cristina Cachola, Nuno Centeno and Paulo Bernardino Bastos, and worked as a performer with Manoel Barbosa in MUURMLGR at the closing of the 20th International Art Biennial of Cerveira. In 2019 she held an artistic residence at the Convento do Carmo, in Torres Novas, which resulted in an individual exhibition MARGEM, and in a catalog. Today she is completing her MA. in Fine Arts – Sculpture, where she develops plastic and conceptual work that approaches ideas such as surface, skin, memory and body, which translates into different techniques, namely sculpture, photography, video and performance.
P. 198
Marsúpio
2019
Blown glass on mold, and textile, red wine, sheepskin, glass, eyelets and buckles.
60 x 40 x 40 cm
Marsúpio (Marsupium) is a name commonly used to refer to the abdominal pouch of certain mammals, formed by a skin fold where the young are housed, or a pouch or bag for carrying something in the abdominal area. Here, this idea comes in the form of a three-dimensional plastic object composed of a sheepskin harness that wears a glass Bottle-Body with wine inside. Carboy is open, the smell of wine, and the adjustable straps invite the viewer to dress and drink from him, contrary to the plinth, which seems to intimidate the viewer in the face of such sacralization. Thus, there is a temptation, an intimate seduction and a careful invitation to its use, due to the transparency and exalted fragility in the representation of the female body. A work that extends in the sense of representations, of metaphor. Wine, a symbol of blood, reveals itself in the exaltation of a glow. Like feelings, alcohol induces an altered perception of reality, becoming a drunkenness of the senses. The straps represent the one that supports and what is supported, the union between the skin of two bodies in the form of a harness. In this sense, the carboy is not presented as an instrument for drinking, but in a prolongation of the body that dresses it. The wine, aphrodisiac, invites fraternization. It is up to each one to want to get drunk or not.
P. 200
Sónia Carvalho
Sónia Carvalho was born in 1978. Currently attends the 2nd year of PhDs in Fine Arts, at FBAUL. She is a collaborative researcher at ID +, Institute of Research in Design, Media and Culture; as well as at CIEBA, Center for Studies in Fine Arts. Master in Drawing and Printing Techniques at FBAUP, (2013). Graduated in Plastic Arts from ESAD, from Caldas da Rainha (2002). She was a student of the ERASMUS program (2000). She has been exhibiting her work since 2002, highlighting the solo exhibition In Between at Plumba Gallery in Oporto and the Options and Futures exhibition curated by Miguel Amado at the Arte Contempo Gallery in Lisbon. She also participated in the FIL art fair in Lisbon. With a Dj / Vj and Performance project. Carvalho has performed at Casa da Música in Oporto, the Tabacalera in Madrid, collaborated with the collective German Pfadfinderei, the American producer Arthur Baker, among others. Sónia was selected for Red Bull Music Academy’s Taster Lx. In a practice based on the study of performance art and the body as a representant (action), I’ve been developing transdisciplinary artistic processes, based in a constant reflexion on the image and belief. Themes such as the mystery of life and death, ritual practice, and the alteration of normal states of the mind are per si direct experiences that I research – where the biographical plane in a holistic and cosmic quest relates directly to certain archetypes as the liminal, the sacred feminine, and spirituality.
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Corpo Transpessoal
2018 — 2019
Pluridisciplinar project
The project that I propose reflects the work in progress of a practical-theoretical PhD thesis in Fine Arts (FBAUL). It is a project that seeksto question the meaning of the represent(action) of the transpersonal body and the numinous in the context of contemporary art. The practice is based on painting as an expanded field, resulting from performative contexts and the relation to which it is proposed in the experience of the poetics of the other. The paradigm underlying pictorial processes in the context of transference processes, as also at practice of ritual performance and play, will be considered, from an anthropological perspective of the body, the study of symbols and archetypes (Carl Jung) and the verification of transpersonal psychology (Stanislav Grof). Participatory observation is proposed as a method of study, based on a routine of meditative practices, in the sense of enhancing expanded states of consciousness, also as a contribution to the process of conquering the inner image (vision) and, focusing on transpersonal dimension, as well as with (re) visual enchantment, relating art and spirituality. As such, it is intended to develop a multimodal exhibition and installation object of pictorial and videographic character – aiming that, this set of works compose in itself a visual and synesthetic dimension capable of impressing on viewers an emotional dimension, and, if possible, even spiritual, remembering our eternally familiar need for the sacred.
P. 204
Susana Rocha
Born in Braga, 1988. Lives and works in Lisbon. Bachelor in Painting and Master in Painting by Fine Arts Faculty – University of Lisbon. Fine Arts PhD student in the same institution, currently researching the field of contemporary art and its possible connexions with conceptual universes like Failure, Anxiety and Death. Participated in artistic residences in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil. Largo das Artes Program, now Despina) and Olafsfjordur (Iceland. Listhus Program) and in collective exhibitions in Portugal, Brazil, Iceland, France and Italy. From several solo exhibitions stands out Mother Nature is a Bitch, Palácio Camões, Lisbon, Portugal (2014); and Such an Orange Anxiety, Espaço Cultural Mercês, Lisbon (2017). Directs the artistic platform Duplex (Lisbon), created by her in 2019.
P. 206
Pressure
2019
Glass, elastic band and extender
variable dimensions
Pressure materially translates a constant internal pressure, or tension, proper to the human condition, particularly exacerbated by contemporary life. The pressure for success, especially professional and financial success, is a mark of our times. Failure (or moments of rupture) are increasingly part of the present-day society, yet repeatedly seen and characterized as negative in the way we construct an image of each other. In this specific work, if the elastic breaks, the glass shatters on the floor; if the extender gives way, the glass strikes and fragments itself against the wall … This creates a balance of forces that safeguards the integrity of the glass, but which may be doomed to be fleeting, since the opposite forces exerted on this fragile surface can also exert the pressure that will cause it to collapse.
P. 208
That hole in the ground
2019
Velvet, acrylic paint, MDF wood,
200 x 60 cm
That hole in the ground establishes in its dimensions a parallel with those of a hole in the ground or a coffin ready to receive a body. Death is implied in this work as the ultimate failure of the human existence and yet one that appears to be seductive. The work intends to create a tension between the idea of a hole in the ground – that final place – and the obvious impression that the hole, rather than being presented in depth, seems to actually levitate. Death is thus presented as a phenomenon of ambiguous sense: an oppressive failure? Or a liberating failure? Nonetheless… a failure.
P. 210
We all love a beautiful tragedy
2019
Glass
80 x 60 cm (each side)
We all love a beautiful tragedy is composed by two symmetrically shattered glasses. This uncanny impossibility illustrates the romantic sense that we often attribute to tragedies, dramas, or less happy endings (especially those that tell an event shared by two individuals) when, although they have a negative outcome, they also exhibit, in some way, beauty in the way they are build, unwind or finish. This is the case for much of the literary works that shape western culture, the music or the films we produce, or the narratives we are interested in.
P. 212
Tiago Margaça
Born in Aveiro and just returned from Berlin — where he lived for the past nine years — Tiago Margaça has been exploring different artistic mediums. From sculpture to painting, as well as branching towards video and music — as a band member and compositor of “Musgos” — he summons all of these different artistic spheres through performance art and installation. Winner of several prizes, among them the Ariane de Rothschild Prize in 2007, he accomplished several relevant exhibitions, collective and individual, both in Portugal and abroad. With a language of its own, Tiago believes that the ERROR is a force of creativity which translates into a total interconnection between the various artistic aspects of his work.
P. 216
Ligth and Space
2018
Arduino microcontroller, stepper motor, thumb stick, magnifying glass, cristals, light filters.
variable dimension
The Light and Space installation of 2018 – with technical support from Dinis Simões and Pedro Viegas – first shown at Nun in Berlin, explores a relationship between these two natural phenomena. Light, remotely controlled by the observer, propagates through space as an infinite proliferation of colors and new forms, where the viewer could interact with space through light. When passing trough several filters, prisms, magnifying-glass and other objects the light became a way of drawing the space. It allowed an intimate dialogue between the space and the public, being always different and in permanent mutation. This interactivity allowed to be an extension of the person who drew the space with the light, giving rise to a “creative awakening” to the viewer/protagonist.
P. 218
Tiago Verdade
Sculpture and drawing is the main field of Tiago Verdade´s art work. The practice of joining these two fields always allows the development and investigation of his work to start from the matter: using mainly the metal and fibers, plastic or natural material. The use of the matter is understood by knowing its own characteristics, that is, comparing its use value in daily life to its value as a proposal of an art object. Because it’s in this path that this object emerges as a extension of its value as a form of construction and interpretation, it being an acquisition of knowledge and plastic perspective while the reasoning behind its plasticity allows its perpetual reformulation. The object is always in full connection with architecture/landscape and with our body. Tiago Verdade holds a master degree in Fine Arts at School of Arts and Desing of Politechnic of Leiria, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. Artist Residencies: Adger Kunstsenter, Kristiansand, Norway (2019); CreArt Aveiro Portugal (2018); CreArt Kristiansand Norway (2015). Exhibitions: Sorlandsutstillingen 50år, Lista Fyr, Norway (2019); CreArt in Residence exhibition, Santa Joana Museum, Aveiro, Portugal (2018). Collective exhibition in Fundação Escultor José Rodrigues, Porto, Portugal (2016); Open Studio – CreArt in Residence – Kristiansand, Norway (2015).
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In and Out
2019
steel, nylon wire, stone
200 x 30 x 30 cm
This sculpture arises from a dialogue between the architecture, bunker made in the Nazi invasion in World War II, and the surrounding area of the UNESCO List Fyr nature reserve. Located near the lighthouse, this sculpture extends the outer and inner space of this space through an octahedron made of steel bar, supporting this, the weight of a stone that was collected in the surroundings of this lighthouse. This was attached by a black nylon rope.