These faces stare at us one after the other, in motion. They tell us stories, their story, the story of Escola da Vila, they look at us. They have all passed through or are in some way related to Escola da Vila in Porto Santo, as pupils, teachers, assistants or even builders of the magnificent building designed by architect Raúl Chorão Ramalho, the unifying element for all those involved.

Mariana Viegas’ 53 portraits form the video installation Passagem, on show at Escola da Vila – Porta 33 in Porto Santo. The exhibition is part of the programme Eira – Contributos para a Escola do Porto Santo e o seu território, curated by Nuno Faria, and is one of a series of five exhibitions by several artists in residence at the school – Duarte Belo, Carolina Vieira, Mariana Viegas, Francisco Janes and Tomás Cunha Ferreira.

Two words occur to me when discussing Mariana Viegas’ work here – Memory and Time. The memory associated with the memory of the school site, constructed from the memories of the different people photographed, or our own memory found in the faces of those portrayed. And time, or the different eras personified by people of varying ages who passed through the school at different times.

The concept of time also emerges in the act of photographing itself, the time needed to establish a relationship between the photographer and the person being photographed, or the time needed to produce their portrait, a portrait of “a presence without form”, as Mariana Viegas puts it, a portrait of memories. This aspect of time is brought into her work through video or the overlapping of images simulating movement.

Numerous faces emerge one after the other against a black background, at times static, at times in motion. We immediately establish a relationship with them. We see ourselves in the other, perhaps because “the face, as the philosophers put it, is a reminder that we are human. We are because others are. Like in a mirror, we see ourselves in the other’s face”, to quote Nuno Faria in the exhibition text. We see memories in the depth of each one, the passage of time. They are similar to us in some way. Faces close to us, that penetrate our intimacy, before which we interrogate our existence, our appearance, our interiority, our personality.

This is a work on portraiture, one of the oldest and most recognisable genres in painting or photography. Nuno Faria explains that the oldest man-made portraits were done over 2000 years ago in ancient Egypt, the Fayum portraits. Mariana Viegas proposes a portrait makeover, presenting it not only through photography but also through video: “I was interested in embedding a layer of time in photography which is possible through video”.

The exhibition’s resulting book echoes the video installation occupying the former canteen of Escola da Vila. Each face is individualised by a blank page preceding the subsequent, with no face contaminating the previous or following one. Two overlapping images of the same person hint at movement on the back of each portrait. When we turn the pages in one direction, we see a sequence of “static portraits”; when we turn the book in the opposite direction, we see a sequence of the same “moving portraits”. We can read the rhythm of the faces in the video installation and contemplate each face individually.

In her words, the group of people portrayed by Mariana Viegas represents “a much larger universe”. By contemplating them, one can go through a Passage to something intimate, “a passage to memory”, piercing the depths of each face that (re)constructs the memory and identity, both individual and collective, of the Escola da Vila site. The exhibition Passagem can be seen at Escola da Vila – Porta 33 in Porto Santo until the end of February 2024, after which it will move to Porta 33 in Funchal.

The opening was part of the second edition of Festa da Escola da Vila, which coincided with the 33rd anniversary of Porta 33. Two days of an intense programme with a large number of speakers. Cristina Clara kicked off the event with a concert by the children’s and youth choirs of the Parish Council and the Senior University of Porto Santo, directed and coordinated by Nazaré Cunha and Margarida Galvão. A local products fair took place the following day at the village school, with performances by Banda Musical da Casa do Povo de Nossa Senhora da Piedade do Porto Santo and the group Folclore do Porto Santo, the inauguration of the exhibition and presentation of the book Passagem by Mariana Viegas, the performance Dulce by Mariana Lemos and Leve-Leve inspired by the traditional São Tomé and Príncipe dances with students from Escola Profissional CELFF, supervised by Mariana Lemos and Andréa Gomes. There were other workshops such as the creation of palm hearts (Vera Menezes) or the traditional dances workshop (Duarte Mendonça) and a toy demonstration from yesteryear (Luís Rodrigues).

This was a lovely encounter between art and the community to mark the intense activity carried out by Porta 33 throughout more than three decades between Funchal and, more recently, Porto Santo.

The Eira programme will also lead to a publication in the near future. It will be a kind of guide to Porto Santo’s territory that will include contributions from people in different fields – art, architecture, history, geology, anthropology, education and geography.