– 31.08.2021
The Galerias Municipais de Lisboa (EGEAC), in partnership with PORTA33, invited the Collective of Curators from the Post-Graduate Course in Art Curatorship at NOVA-FCSH to organise an exhibition that explores the specificities of the creative panorama of Madeira by presenting the work from a new generation of artists from the island. This project has received support from the Funchal City Hall.
The multiplicities of place were the starting point for this study on landscape.
Islands are a fusion of land and sea, like stars they are reflected on the water. Steeped in paradoxes, multiple realities are the fruits harvested from seeds grown in differing types of soil. Oscillating permanently between the notions of island-paradise and island-prison, the human and the natural relate to each other differently. Each horizon is unique, giving space to the poetic construction of fictionalised geographies. One can hear the crystallisation of echoes of shipwrecks and the foam of the waves washing ashore.
The journey is the limit.
The mild warmth recalls legacies of bygone eras and desires of an imagined past. The woolly wisps of mist amid the mountains recall both the unattainable and the catastrophic. Brushstrokes of forest and human landscapes accompany our steps, side by side with rocks and cliffs: spaces of harsh vulnerability. If to wake is to remember, the landscape is permanently awoken.
The (im) materiality of artistic creation presents itself as an extension of a very specific cultural landscape. Considering the works as part of a common path, a language of fiction is recreated through unfixed spaces and singular discursive practices.
To this collective imaginary we may add the very real condition of Madeira, which unites all the artists contributing to this exhibition. By working on the margins one is subjected to a process of exotification that appears from the outside, akin to the memory of a natural, original, idyllic place. But what does each artist contribute from their landscape?
Human construction, after all, also consists of silences, and in a desire for speech that finds resonance in creative discourses. The works on view here may refer to the island, but do not seek to be conditioned by it. Speculations give rise to new relations, while archipelagos of meaning emerge.
Collective of Curators
Ana Carolina Valente, Ana Sofia Pascoal, Beatriz Freitas, Beatriz Hilário, Catarina Rebelo, Elena Bianchi, Georgia Quintas, Inês Almeida, Jesse James, João Firmino, Laurinda Marques, Maria Helena Carvalho, Paula Gasparetto, Paulo Fernandes, Rita Cêpa.
Lenders
Balcony – Contemporary Art Gallery, Carolina Vieira, Coleção Duarte Garcez, Coleção Figueiredo Ribeiro – Quartel da Arte Contemporânea de Abrantes, Duarte Ferreira, Eduarda Rosa, Filipa Martins, Fundação Bienal de Arte de Cerveira, Fundação Carmona e Costa, Galeria Lehmann + Silva, Galeria dos Prazeres, Hugo Olim, Joana Viveiros, José Maria Amador, Juan Barros, MUDAS – Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Madeira, Nuno Henrique, PORTA33, Sara Rodrigues, Tiago Casanova, Vítor Magalhães.
Acknowledgements
To all the artists, institutions and private collectors who loaned works for this exhibition.
Emília Tavares, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Instituto de História de Arte, Liliana Coutinho, Câmara Municipal do Funchal, PORTA33 (Maurício Reis e Cecília Freitas), Sandra Vieira Jürgens.
– 31.08.2021