Every week, UMBIGO invites two people to share their 5 cultural suggestions. What can we do at home? From a book to a podcast, album or film: here are recommendations from artists, curators, gallery owners, cultural activists, friends.

We will share the recipe for what makes us better, and we remain united and positive.

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Luísa Salvador

Books
The Prayer of Men
2006

A book that guides us at any time.  Is an anthology of spiritual traditions from various eras and geographies, from the earliest peoples. I’m an atheist, but I like to think of prayer as a practice of thanksgiving to what surrounds us.

Com os copos
Miguel Esteves Cardoso
2007

Drinking a gin and tonic, and only one, on Saturday. It is a ritual and has a cultural basis, so I suggest Com os copos by Miguel Esteves Cardoso. A work where the author compiles stories on various drinks and cocktails. I never looked at a gin the same way again, and now it only makes sense to drink it at the end of the day, as the author suggests. The light that enters the glass, illuminating the ice cubes, along with the yellowish colour of the lemon slice, matches the shades of the sun that is ready to conceal itself.

Chronicle

A place to hang your hat
Bruce Chatwin
1984

A place to hang your hat, what we all need. is a chronicle of Bruce Chatwin, an English writer and compulsive traveller, on the search for a home. Chatwin evokes the motivations and criteria applicable to a house, and ends up finding this place to hang his hat, commissioning the project from the young architect John Pawson, unknown at the time. A beautiful description of what a house can be and evoke, between memories of personal experiences and travel memories.

Blog

Da Horta para a Cozinha

Recipes. Who doesn’t like them? Claude Lévi-Strauss used to say that cooking food makes us human. We are technological beings, there is no act more cultural than the transformation of food. I suggest Da Horta para a Cozinha, the blog of a renowned cook who daily reveals a recipe. They are healthy, tasty and some happen to be more elaborate, for those who want to take risks. I’ve done several and thanked the author. She’s the mother of a great friend.
Link: dahortaparaacozinha.com

Contemplation

Doing nothing. Also known as contemplation. It’s more difficult than it seems, but when we do nothing, we take notice of the window where the moonrise is best seen, or where the best and warmest sunlight comes in. They begin to correspond to moments of the day that we revere and for which we make ourselves available. Let’s contemplate, like Herberto Helder: “Ah, let me study. On the one hand, the flower when it rises in its own silence, and reaches the color, and bows overshadowed by the perfume. On the other, the thick stars standing against the walls, odourless and white”. This quote that opens Lourdes Castro’s Grand Herbier d’Ombres, a huge visual ode to the contemplation of the slow pace.

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Luísa Salvador (Lisbon, 1988) is a visual artist and researcher. She is a PhD student in Contemporary Art History at FCSH-UNL, and was awarded a scholarship by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2015-2019). She has a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art History from FCSH-UNL (2012) and a Sculpture degree from FBAUL (2009). She exhibits regularly since 2012. She won the Young Creators Award 2018 for Plastic Arts. Besides her artistic practice, she also develops a written activity, between theoretical and chronic texts. Under the pseudonym Luísa Montanha e Vale, she founded in 2018 the quarterly publication Almanaque – Reportório de Arte e Esoterismo, where she is publisher. She lives and works in Lisbon.