Centro de Artes de Águeda / Municipality of Águeda, together with the University of Aveiro and the Municipality of Albergaria-a-Velha as co-organizers, has been promoting, since January 14th, the second edition of O Desenho como Pensamento, with Alexandre Baptista as artistic director. Just like the first initiative, this cycle aims to present the work of plastic artists who privilege drawing in their work. Besides a monthly calendar with three individual exhibitions simultaneously, in different venues of Águeda, O Desenho como Pensamento presents a cycle of talks and three group exhibitions. In this short piece, I will talk about the third exhibition module, which opened on April 22 and will end on May 24. The triad, composed of two Portuguese artists and one international artist (for the first time in the monographic record of O Desenho como pensamento), adds a strained relationship between drawing and politics to this stage of the cycle.

At Salão de Chá of Parque Municipal Alta Vila, in Águeda, we find Skin Afair by Cristina Ataíde. Five drawings, four in the preliminary room, displayed on the walls; and another one in the salon, dissolving the architectural limitations of the interior, given its profile as a drawing-installation. In both, Cristina Ataíde uses the frottage technique to register and collect fragments of the spaces of the world through which she passes. She even writes down the origin of those notes, with the respective time and date. In one of the works, we read “Largo de S. Bento 23.7.2012 13h”. Edifying a moment is all about the human being’s inherent ability to record it. In this case, and given the method used by the artist, the gesture involves collecting the skin of the space, something done by Cristina Ataíde herself. The world does not change its skin, which would perhaps be highly beneficial to those who seek to collect it. But there are ways of looking for the world’s skin, always aligned with the precise moment of collection. And this moment, from the instant to the political time in which we live today, is trampled by ideas and wills that Cristina Ataíde registers alongside the drawings. Deep down, it is the place between the visible and the invisible, so that we do not forget where we should put our feet and our ideas. “I preserve the earth”, “I condemn violence” or “I like to surprise myself” are aphorisms that follow the visitor in the search for the right place, in the tension between the place of the body and the place of ideas.

At Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Águeda (University of Aveiro) and at Biblioteca Municipal Manuel Alegre, we find the exhibition Máquina Utópica-Poema Livre by Francisco Vidal, which brings together drawings, mostly large-scale, dealing above all with racial matters. From truisms in the context of antiracism to historical figures and more intimate episodes in the artist’s life, we see an acute politicisation of drawing, one that is necessary, activist and perpetually urgent. And we also find in these drawings the fight for equality.

Finally, at Sala Estúdio of Centro de Artes de Águeda, we find four works from Bestiario, an exhibition by the Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. It is a large format photographic series printed on canvas depicting anonymously painted animals on the Havana walls, under a title alluding to Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and medieval literature. When capturing these animals, representations of living organisms, Carlos Garaicoa inevitably registers the architecture of which they are part and the social issues of the surrounding city. This raises questions about the connection between the individual and the city; not only in relation to this exhibition, but in the quest for transversality between the three. I leave some short notes on this relationship below:

– Based on bodily movements, the individual forms the map of his life (cf. Walter Benjamin); the same is certainly true for political movements;

– The City is a space where the individuality of the self is easily neutralised;

– This neutralisation must be fought as much as possible;

– Exacerbated individuality may ultimately lead to anarchy;

– All movements, regardless of their roots, always end up being political;

– Is it possible to speak of political drawing or is every drawing political?

– Humanity is the skin of the world;

– The attempt to map the visible allows us not to forget what we do not see.

Also worth mentioning is that the next exhibition module of O Desenho como Pensamento will feature works by Vasco Araújo, Gabriela Albergaria and Marcelo Moscheta (June 3 to July 5). The collective exhibition of the cycle, curated by Ana Anacleto, will also be inaugurated on May 13, at Espaço Expositivo of Centro de Artes de Águeda. The cycle will last until September 30. The full programme can be found on the website of one of the co-organisers, the University of Aveiro: https://www.ua.pt/pt/noticias/1/79593.