The Bedside Table is an online project conceived by Pedro Valdez Cardoso that will happen during one year, fortnightly, by the hand of several artists.

Part curatorial project, part artistic and familiar one, The Bedside Table is a succession of works difficult to characterize since they fall short on the taxonomic tendency that we are used to. The pieces that the guest artists chose to keep in Valdez Cardoso’s bedside table live in the dubious restlessness of dreams, in the opening and closing of the drawer, in what is shown to the strangers and what is kept in intimacy, in what is private and what is public and shown at the digital platform that serves the project.

Flowers are also part of the project and the invited artist will have to choose a species to be featured in a jar, witnessing the passage of time and the measure of life and death. Object, flower and artist live in a lustful complicity, between secret and beauty, pleasure and sensuality.

For its first intervention, Pedro Valdez Cardoso has chosen Miguel Ângelo Rocha as the first guest, who proposed a spatial and chromatic reconfiguration of the drawer inside titled Verdeazul. A jar of Zantedeschia aethiopica (calla lilies) goes along this intervention and is to be featured as background for the first poster which will be put on sale after every guest. Following Ângelo Rocha, Susana Mendes Silva, in Impudente, mocks those who open the bedside drawer; Luís Paulo Costa, in Cartas que não escrevi, leaves some unspoken words to be written, pushing them to the dark corners of the drawer; Mariana Gomes, in Era um dedo, shows her unusual humour; and more recently Nuno Sousa Vieira, with Pintura de cabeceira – o céu azul, which locks, folds and builds the dream of a sky.

In an interview with Elsa Garcia, Pedro Valdez Cardoso explains: “The project arose during the lockdown because my artistic practice came to a halt, and as the days went on, I found myself reflecting on what I would like to do. Putting together or giving a platform to projects other than mine was always something I wanted to do, but I never got round to it for lack of time. Being stuck at home, I started thinking about what I could create from my surroundings. I also thought of the smallest exhibition space possible that resonated deeply with the intimate, domestic side to my nature and my own experience.”

The Bedside Table project is available here and is updated fortnightly with a new guest. The website and poster design are made by the studio Oh ! Mana.