– 20.01.2016
Five years after the death of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, one of the greatest writers of the Portuguese language, the cycle Paisagens Efémeras (Ephemeral Landscapes) (title of the author’s unfinished project) presents an exhibition and conference in Lisbon.
Starting from the collection of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho (1941-2010), we follow the path that emerges from the diversity of his materials and creative processes. A vast path: from Southern Africa to Brazil, from post-independence Angola to inland exile, from the desert to the sea, from obstinations to hesitations, from family to the demanding solitude, from the long war to the analysis of its implications, from the minuteness of the field diaries to the mirror game between observer and observed. We followed, perplexed, the tracks of his methodic research, a multiplier of meanings.
We let ourselves be enchanted by the background of his works in which, through the initial, temporary and final planning, we watched ideas being born, growing and being transformed. We were also interested in the effects of the passage of time, incorporating accidents of a lifetime: unfinished ideas, materials that time has altered, photograms that have become scratches, paper that the bug has eaten. These details added by time remind us that the work, unfinished, abandoned or published, can either be remade or be principle for other purposes.
The exhibition also includes contributions from the artists António Ole, Délio Jasse, Kiluanji Kia Henda and Mónica de Miranda, among others, invited to dialogue with the imagery of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s work. New interpretative possibilities are thus proposed based on a dialogue, namely intergenerational, with other artistic practices. This meeting takes curatorial form at a moment which, although no longer the work of Ruy Duarte, is insistently challenged by his work.
-Ana Balona de Oliveira, Inês Ponte and Marta Lança, curators
– 20.01.2016