As we gaze upon Coimbra’s skyline, we can see a striking sight in the form of a large red-light installation located in the north tower of the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova. The piece bears the inscription não sofra mais. The exhibition is named after an intervention created by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (born in 1976), whose artwork is being showcased in Portugal for the very first time. He was inspired by the slogan of Dr. Bayard sweets during a visit to Portugal, and this inspiration is reflected in the piece, as well as the watercolour drawing featured in the exhibition. The work serves as a metaphor for an invitation to confront pain and find solutions to it. It takes us on a journey through the complex history of the Monastery, from the lives of the Poor Clares who lived there and endured sacrifice, enclosure, and suffering, to the current state of the building. It captures the ambiguities of the Monastery’s past and present. As part of the Anozero – Coimbra Biennial of Contemporary Art programme, a solo exhibition is organized for an artist with international recognition every few years. não sofra mais reveals the effort of a multidisciplinary figure whose pieces take on a new meaning and significance within the monastic setting of the 18th-century Santa Clara-a-Nova building. With baroque architecture, religious and military influences, and a sense of abandonment, Kjartansson draws inspiration from the Gesamtkunstwerk concept and views art as a space for experimentation. He creates a body of work based on cinema, theatre, visual culture, and literature, using mediums such as drawing, painting, video, performance, and music. His works aim to create emotionally charged sensorial experiences, where pretence and staging play crucial roles.

The exhibition presents a compelling case for the significance of the dialogue that Kjartansson creates between his works and the surrounding architecture. He poses thought-provoking questions and responds with artistic propositions, inviting the viewer to engage in a constant process of discovery and exploration, seeking connections and correlations. Taking into consideration the building’s history, we can focus on one of its chapters and examine the entrance work titled Me and my Mother (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020). This is strategically placed next to the old baby hatch, where newborns were either given up for adoption out of love or maternal rejection and cared for by religious entities. In this fixed, narrative-less shot, we witness the tense and complex relationship between human beings and the mother figure. Ragnar stands rigidly next to his mother, a well-known Icelandic actress, as they both stared silently at the camera. She then begins to systematically spit in her son’s emotionless face, repeating the action with tense breaks. The work is a combination of humor, absurdity, and violence, displaying the intimate relationship, trust, and collaboration between both. This collaborative project has been repeated every five years. Me and my Mother is a family portrait that captures the passage of time, almost like a ritual. The artist behind it is fascinated by the blending of reality and fiction, and uses this piece to induce a rebellious memento mori. Additionally, the portrait expresses a deep filial love that is difficult to put into words. Throughout the exhibition, we find the artist’s fascination with the concept of repetition. This technique serves as a tool to unlock numerous spatial and temporal possibilities, ultimately transforming performative elements such as repeated gestures or simple song phrases into works of art. Upon stepping into the entrance floor, we were greeted by a celestial mantra that enhanced the Monastery’s transcendental atmosphere. The long corridor led us on a performative, intimate, and immersive experience through the video installation Song, 2011. The Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Sculpture hosted Kjartansson’s three-week performance, featuring the artist’s three nieces performing the song the weight of the world is love for six hours straight. The song was inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s poem. The protagonists are positioned at the center of the scene on a pedestal adorned with blue satin. They represent both classical and modern standards of beauty, and engage in feminine rituals while continuously reciting the lyrics as if it were a form of prayer. The slow movement of the camera adds to the hypnotic and mysterious repetition of the timeless image. In it, ancient sculptures of neoclassical shapes appear to be watching the spectacle of softness and femininity. The scene is an absorbing hymn to beauty, the sublime, and love. Ragnar’s artistic practice consistently incorporates musical references. One notable example is his recent work Nocturne, 2023, inspired by and performed at the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova. During the performance, Ragnar played the guitar and performed Take Me, a song by the country singer and composer George Jones. We can watch the artist’s solo performance in a two-channel video, set opposite on two oratory altarpieces, in the monastery’s small and secret chapel. The chapel is surrounded by high-relief religious figures that have degraded over time due to abandonment. Immersed in the enigmatic atmosphere of the room, we allow ourselves to be led by the artist’s (de)sacralised image and the compelling force of his prayer for redemption and salvation: Take me to your darkest room/Close every window and bolt every door/The very first moment I heard your voice/I’d be in darkeness no more. The watercolour painting The Night We Went to That Club was created for an exhibition and draws inspiration from the Hotel Oslo in Coimbra. The artwork captures a sense of drama and emotional intensity. It is reminiscent of a collage on a wall, partially covering the Portuguese tiles. It captures the enigmatic and solitary essence of the city’s night sky, inducing melancholy, yearning, and nostalgia. The title of the artwork Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, 2015-2023, pays tribute to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem and conveys the same sense of longing and craving. The painting extends into the surrounding environment with snow-covered rocky cliffs rising from the ground. This invites visitors to interact with it by moving among the cliffs. As we walk through the mise-en-scène of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, we notice that the mountain landscape appeared to be a theatre set. The romanticism and pastoral nature of the paintings fuel a sense of beauty, set against the building system of each structure. This creates an opposition between the ideal beauty and the harshness of reality. Immersed in darkness, we experience the lengthy musical video-installation The Visitors, 2012, located in the Monastery’s former refectory. It is both performative and immersive, a musical portrait that consists of nine channels arranged around the room. It is visible from one specific standpoint, stirring melancholic and joyful emotions. The music was recorded at the historic Rokeby Farm in the State of New York. Each musician played their instrument in a different part of the house and each room was recorded on a separate channel. Only when all nine channels are synchronized do the voices and instruments merge together in a harmonious orchestration. The Visitors is a work of art that explores the themes of romantic love, separation, and reunion through a combination of performance, music, and film. Created by Kjartansson, this ambitious project invites the audience to become active participants in the experience, allowing them to feel the intimacy of the moments depicted on screen. The piece is a beautiful tribute to the power of love and the emotions that come with it.

On the first floor of the exhibition, Kjartansson presents God, 2007, an opus that explores themes of sadness and grief. The artist routes the glamorous and artistic era of Hollywood by performing in a black dinner jacket, much like Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole, as the lead singer of a small orchestra. The performance incorporates stereotypes and clichés of the time. During his performance, the gestures and poses he portrays convey a sense of humour and irony. He repeatedly recites Sorrow conquers happiness for a duration of thirty minutes. The delicate sounds and instrumental explosions in the video installation create a melancholic message that takes us to another time, almost like a hypnotic trance. The staging elements of the work add to this effect, with the voluptuous pink satin curtain breaking through the screen and extending into the exhibition spot, transforming it. It concludes with a poignant work titled A Lot of Sorrow, 2013-14, featuring a live performance by the band The National. They play their song Sorrow on a continuous loop for six hours, evoking feelings of lament and sadness. The durational video showcases the band members’ perseverance, physical and psychological strength. It provides viewers with a glimpse of the various states of energy, emotion, exhaustion, and relief experienced by the performers. Although the song changes, the original sound is always recognizable.

This exhibition takes us on a journey through irony, humour, suffering, happiness, melancholy, discomfort, and resistance. The artist’s effort is deeply rooted in the tradition of theatrical language, music, repetition, and performance. One of AnoZero’s goals has been to establish a consistent presence of contemporary art in Coimbra. The exhibition não sofra mais by Ragnar Kjartansson has helped to achieve this by achieving recognition in the international art scene.

não sofra mais by Ragnar Kjartansson is on display until July 16 at the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova, Coimbra.