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Transatlantic Pearls

Ethereal contours and sublime feat… – Cut the bullshit. Outras Lembranças, Outros Enredos presents an exhibition in Lisbon with one of Portugal’s largest art collections. One of the most raw and solid examples of one of 2022’s finest gatherings of contemporary artworks. Until December 18 at Cordoaria Nacional.

This year, some of the biggest contemporary art events took place in the Portuguese capital, such as ARCOLisboa and JUSTLX. And also several anthological exhibitions of renowned artists such as Julião Sarmento, Tony Conrad and Ai Wei Wei, public and critical successes. But one of the best surprises came at the end.

With similarities to a Biennial. Both by the number of works in the exhibition, and by its privileged location. The exhibition path, with splendid dimensions and curatorship, shows the best of the Collection Teixeira de Freitas.

The extensive Collection, which began to be established in 2002 by Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, a Brazilian lawyer living in Portugal, is unique for its coherence and solidity. The art collections reflect the taste and critical tendencies of their owner. Teixeira de Freitas, part of the artistic context for over fifteen years, revealed in an interview with Stefano Pirovano in 2017 for the CFA portal, that his collection did not have a defined line at the beginning. However, everything changed when he met Adriano Pedrosa, (artistic director of MASP since 2014), who advised him and collaborated alongside him in designing the collection. Although he followed an institutional approach at the beginning, the collection intuitively changed based on a specific strategy defined by the two, focusing on artists from the 60-70 generation or a little younger. But without following geographical limits, which in the words of the collector shows the desire to “keep the doors open”[1].

This has made it possible to build a collection based on the theme of architecture, which explores the critical perspectives of the international geopolitics outlined in the last two hundred years. A temporal fraction that also marks the commemoration of Brazil’s Independence and is the exhibition happenstance of Outras lembranças, Outros Enredos. At the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Camões Institute, over 200 works are exhibited in five modules at Cordoaria Nacional.

Bernardo Mosqueira and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, curators of the exhibition, display five readings that overlap national identities in an effort to underline the ‘intimacy of the four continents’. Outras Lembranças, Outros Enredos, the first nucleus, opens the exhibition with a sequence of remarkable works about the relationships between the past and the present with a view to creating other futures. Aliança (2012) by Ernesto Neto, the first impact of the exhibition, recalls the building’s past in a conversation with the important surplus of Desenhos (2000-2005) by Marcius Galan, leading viewers to make a synthesis about time.

It is exciting to encounter Rio Fundo (2004) by Marepe for the first time. The work stands in the centre of the infinite longitudinal corridor as an icon of the many Brazilian lives, especially those of the Northeast. This dilutes the passage of time and makes us a small speck in the grandiosity of the ensemble of Cotidianos. ‘The Atlantics: Plots, Distances, Abysses’ extends the exhibition route as the second module, juxtaposing in different cosmogonies the poetic diversities of the peoples who share the extremities of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite the immediate attention that the work Desenho (15) (1957) by Lygia Pape draws in the viewer to the wall where it sits, a beautiful surprise lies on the opposite side. It is the conversation between João Onofre’s Every Gravedigger in Lisbon (2006), Autumn in Lisbon (2004) and Matt Mullican’s Sem Título (Lisbon Ephemera) (2009), which makes one laugh at first. When the mockery of the macabre ends, a tear bursts in the eye given the multiplicity of meanings, based on a certain nostalgia particular to Portuguese culture.

On the other hand, Damián Ortega does not appear slowly, nor does he build his senses on the spectator’s introspection as in the previous conversation. Quite the contrary: Spiral of Violence (2005) is a punch in the stomach. Or, at least, in mine, who spent my childhood in a city like Rio de Janeiro.

‘ruínaconstrução’ is the third module and the most crucial of the five. Starting from the base of the collection, about the buildings and their surroundings, ‘ruínaconstrução’ uses Germanic grammar to trace the conceptual communion of building and deconstruction. Coluna de Colombo (2005) by João Maria and Pedro Paiva Gusmão is parallel to Vitória de Samotracia (1962) by Yves Klein, in a one-way sense about the buildings of the past and coloniality.

Emily Jacir and Paolo Icaro occupy an ephemeral corridor in the exhibition. With the works Where We Come From, detail (Faiez) (2002-2003) and Seven, Catena (1968) respectively, a critique is made on the fallacy of free movement, so exploited by contemporary Western Europe.

‘Estúdios sobre a Liberdade’ marks the beginning of the exhibition’s finale. The fourth and penultimate module, in a different environment from Cordoaria’s main corridor, takes a pedagogical and constructive approach to the processes of refusal, revolt, struggle and resurrection, characteristic of the theme. How can we resist servitude? Do we earn or do we take freedom? These are questions in this fraction of the exhibition. Jonathas de Andrade and his installation/constellation stains two walls with the work Ressaca Tropical (2009), Memory – Books Without Name (1990) by Geta Bratescu occupy two sides of the same memory palace.

The standout feature of this exhibition is the subsequent room. I had to hold back tears when I saw Man does not live on bread alone (2013) by Taysir Batniji. A panel of soap, reminiscent of the traditional making of Aleppo soaps, has an engraving of the thirteenth amendment of the US constitution: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state(…)

Containing the tears caused by Batniji’s work did not work, as in the same room is Plan de Producción de Sueños para empresas estatales en Cuba (2010/2012) by Adrian Melis. My emotions ended up running freely down my face.

Finally, and also importantly, the fifth module ‘Poesia e Fábula: Linguagem e Apoteose’ delves into language and language as a form of invention of worlds. At this point, I heard Construção by Chico Buarque on my headphones, and I could see that Sem título (peso de plomo) (es eso todo lo que hay en la vida) (2008) by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Andrés Sanchez Robayna in the book Variaciones sobre el Vaso de agua (2015) converge. After all, they talk about the glasses of water or coffee that are with us in our daily lives. “(…) es nuestro centinela. Se acercamos el oído, casi lo oímos respirar.” [2] They are our companions, protectors, and at the edges they hold a world that belongs to us, even if momentarily, like language.

The exhibition Outras Lembranças, Outros Enredos has solid works of art that are not subject to the contemporary market’s production speed rationale. The Collection Teixeira de Freitas dilutes our reading time and slows down the pace for the ephemeral and fleeting. Enjoying an exhibition like this is an end-of-year gift, both for the quality of the individual works and for the curatorial journey at Cordoaria.

This is a collection of transatlantic pearls. A year-end treat with free admission. Enjoy.

 

 

 

[1]https://www.conceptualfinearts.com/cfa/2016/05/16/collector-luiz-augusto-teixeira-de-freitas-too-much-art-is-produced-just-to-feed-the-supermarket/

[2] Robayna, A. S. (2015). Variaciones sobre el vaso de agua. Galaxia Gutenberg.

Maria Eduarda Wendhausen (Rio de Janeiro, 2000). She graduated in Art and Heritage Sciences from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and is a student of the Masters in Criticism, Curatorship and Theories of Art from the same institution. She also studied at Sotheby's Institute of Art on the Writing for the Art World, From Idea to Submission course. She works as a writer and curator in Lisbon, Portugal. She collaborated with Manicómio in the Pavilhão31 exhibition space and with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa. Her last performance as a curator, took place at ARCOLisboa2022 with the exhibition CRACK THE EGG of the Millennium bcp Youth Art Prize, in 2022. In 2023, she started collaborating with CentralC as content manager. She writes regularly for scientific and specialized magazines as a freelancer in the field of art criticism, as well as features and academic essays, with the aim of disseminating and promoting to the general public, the multiple facets of art studies and their unfolding in everyday life.

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