Galeria Municipal de Almada | Câmara Municipal de
Almada, 2023.
Catalogue of the group exhibition Emancipação do Vivente, curated by Museum for the Displaced. This project held in collaboration with the Galerias Municipais de Lisboa and the Galeria Municipal de Almada, presented simultaneously across both venues from February 24 to May 28, 2023.This edition includes essays by Museum for the Displaced, Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, and Ana Rita Alves, as well as exhibition views and brief contextual texts on the various works.
“Emancipation of the Living, a collaboration between the Municipal Galleries of Lisbon and Almada, simultaneously occupies two spaces, one in each of the two neighbouring and deeply interconnected cities that have witnessed immense movement and change, including rapid gentrification, in the last decade. The presented works provide different entry points into complex topics related to displacement.”
— Museum for the Displaced
“We are also avid readers; everything around us speaks and teaches us; in everything there is information to read and decode. The inclination of the crescent moon speaks to us of heat and rain; the position of the stars indicates the passage of time; the appearance of insects reveals new sources of food; the work of ants alerts us to approaching storms. There is nothing that does not speak: the white and red lightning speaks; the wind dictates its knowledge through the speed, temperature and direction of its path; the direction of the flight of the birds indicates to the women hunters where they will find the tapir. Securing our existence depends on constant reading.”
— Yásnaya Aguilar Gil
“Over the years, as we have learned with the PER, the only possible way to address state violence seems to be the combination of collective protest with the mobilisation of legal tools, risking processes of institutional retaliation, which range from silence and opacity to violence and environmental degradation intended to make staying unbearable and dangerous. In contexts of early morning shifts and long hours at work, time is a luxury and loss assumes gigantic proportions, thus demanding that solidarity, so often limited by racial lines, becomes the rule and not the exception.”
— Ana Rita Alves
Galeria Municipal de Almada | Câmara Municipal de
Almada, 2023.