tu & eu [you & me], by Susana Mendes Silva, could have been just eu [me]. However, in order to do justice to her practice of creation and thought – always attentive and curious about the art of encounter –, the artist’s new solo exhibition, opening at the Cine-Teatro Garrett (Póvoa de Varzim) on 20 December, would also have to be defined as a group show. Thus, as part of the Serralves Collection’s Itinerant Exhibitions Programme, a group of expressive works of Susana Mendes Silva’s career, from the 1990s to the present day, are in conversation with pieces and collaborations by other artists in her personal collection or in the Foundation’s collection: Alice Geirinhas, Ana Hatherly, Dara Birnbaum, Mané Pacheco, Maria José Aguiar and Yoko Ono.

Curated by Joana Valsassina, the exhibition evokes drawing, which is so central to the artist’s work, as an “expanded field”, a “relational tool” and a triggering agent for movement, three-dimensionality and literature. No wonder her body of work finds so many ways to materialise: from performance to video, from photography to installation, from the trace of writing to the contours of pictorialism. Susana Mendes Silva pursues her own desire, with all its subversive freedom and impenetrable mystery, like someone who learns to draw because she unlearns the obligation to represent. On this path that opens up, shifting the boundaries and remapping the margins, other walkers naturally join in – just like a ball of yarn that, as it unravels, leaves some knots behind.

With delicacy, but also with humour and a dose of danger, tu & eu seeks to point out these knots, suggesting gateways to the various investigative and affective layers in Susana Mendes Silva’s restless work. Based on the coincidences and synchronicities between her artistic universe and those of the other creators she invites into this constellation, the mono-multi-graphic exhibition inspires reflections on the body, language, the erotic, violence, the feminine, and as many other plots as we can discover.

Also in conjunction with the 25th edition of Correntes d’Escritas, which will take place in the same venue from 19 to 24 February 2024, the artist will perform the performance Suruba de autores, in which she sews together, through a performative reading, the words of authors such as Mariana Alcoforado, Santa Teresa de Ávila, Gilles Deleuze, Marquês de Sade, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno or Maria Velho da Costa.

tu & eu opens at the Cine-Teatro Garrett (Póvoa de Varzim) next Wednesday, 20 December, from 5pm until 8pm. Showing until 24 March 2024.