The Landscape Voices at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto
The exhibition The Landscape Voices is on show at the Exhibition Pavilion of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, part of the research project El paisaje que habla. Marco teórico y referencias culturales interdisciplinares. México, Portugal y España como escenarios, intended to bring new knowledge and perspectives to analysing the current understanding and historical representation of the landscape in contemporary times. The outcome of studies stemming from the historical-artistic interpretation of the landscape, based on the subjects of art history and architectural history, the exhibition gathers a set of methodologies and humanistic proposals in contemporary art, architecture, musicology, historical memory, and cultural heritage through works of different sorts by artists and researchers reflecting on the landscape and the territory from a standpoint of dialogue and collaboration. Led by Pedro Maia, associate professor and lecturer at Universidade Lusófona and integrated researcher and member of the Scientific Committee of Arq.ID (UL), as well as Joan Carles Oliver, researcher and lecturer at the Universidad de las Islas Baleares, the exhibition, the third in the research project, was conceived as a Kunstkammer, comprising “artefacts with an object-based, scientific, artistic and hybrid quality, establishing multicultural and cross-disciplinary exchanges around the idea of landscape“. Its concept and set-up is inspired by Warburg’s idea of the atlas and the cabinets of curiosities. The Landscape Voices features works whose selection prompts us to look at the meanings, codes and signs they hold, in a connection between different cultures, authors and areas of research that interact in the same space.
The pieces on display present us with a kaleidoscopic and wide-ranging perspective tied to the contemporary understanding of landscape, a concept that, while undergoing a process of conceptual crisis and transformation, is becoming increasingly recognised and articulated in the sphere of artistic representation. Urbanisation, the third landscape, placeless urbanism or shared landscapes, all latent terms in the academic realm, are finding their way into the domain of artistic creation and are reflected in numerous works on show. The photographic projects Aphanismos by Artur Leão, Oblíquo by Ana Miriam Rebelo and East Iberia by Sérgio Rolando stand out in this regard. On the one hand, they interact with landscape structures found in the Portuguese collective imagination and the promotion of their casual settings, as well as with the remnants of an architecture and territory shaped by a Soviet legacy, or even with rural landscapes where the inclusion of prehistoric ritual sites fuels a fictional portrait of the Iberian Peninsula’s ancestral traditions and customs. The relationship between sound, space and the body is studied by Ricardo Nogueira Fernandes in the installation 500Hz, while the relationship between the body and the mind is analysed by Rita Castro Neves and Daniel Moreira in the installation Musgo, exploring the notion of thinking with one’s hands and feeling with one’s brain and vision. Drawing on the historical image of a stereoscopic viewfinder, the wooden structure – created by the duo – stands out as a picture-showing machine, unveiling possibilities for perceiving the landscape through sensory conceptual exploration.
By analysing the relationship between the natural and the artificial, Rita Carreiro takes the Azorean landscape as her own in Insularidade, recreating it as a collectible object in a work that, as a cabinet of curiosities, unveils the blackness of stone and rock forms on mirrors, whose reflections multiply landscape illustrations. Maria Oliveira also explores the relationship between man, nature and the sea in the photographic and dreamlike image De Vagar o Mar, which, following a residency in Figueira da Foz, opens up a metaphorical gateway to the ancient and pre-human world in the salt pans, recognising this territory’s natural and cultural vitality.
To promote reflection and discussion on the contemporary condition of the city, using exhibition scenarios that are mindful of the territory in which they are based, Coletivo LAB.25 presents Promenade as an urban archaeology project: a ruin fragment and videographic records, superimposed on construction objects. Promenade, an ongoing production, attempts to find new ways of relating to the city’s public space by activating and roaming the streets of Porto, which, after the demolition of the FBAUP Tower, has now symbolically returned to the university, creating a new discourse and re-signifying the experience of the place. By politically, socially and emotionally mapping the Bonfim neighbourhood, the artist duo Pedra no Rim is presenting us with abandoned and unusual objects from the borough’s streets, which, after being mapped, are turned into ceramic objects. From lost shoes, matches and gloves to pigeons attacked by seagulls, the installation – between the beautiful and the grotesque – presents an atlas of urban memories and mythologies, local experiences and vices, inviting us to stare at the ground.
The political nature of Claúdia Amandi’s Os Países Distantes são Maravilhosos, whose different-toned graphite drawing – repeating the quote from Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen’s short story A Fada Oriana – produces a sense of optical misalignment, complemented by images projected onto the wall: the first satellite photos of Russian military activity on the border with Ukraine in 2022, in a work on what everyone makes of the landscape/territory that is foreign to them, reminding us that no category is ever fixed, neither in time, nor in space, nor in the word. Hanging in the exhibition hall, Gabriela Vaz Pinheiro’s Crime Clandestino#1 thrusts its apocalyptic presence upon us, unveiling the silent landscape of a fire-ravaged forest in an installation condemning environmental crimes, where the transparency and duplicity of the printed image’s fabric reinforce the fragile nature of the forest’s heritage. In Um caminho que percorro – uma pele habitada by Mariana Maia Rocha, we see skin as a place and reflect on the passage of time. Using latex as a medium, this piece discloses images and reliefs arising from contact with surfaces, the contact with reality that generates marks and translates places.
Alongside the object-based, artistic and hybrid artefacts on display, we should mention the presence of international studies on the territory. The intimate nature of the nucleus, afforded by the setting, emphasises a study and work environment, where tables neatly arranged in the space are displaying a series of scientific posters, unveiling a genuine documentary and photographic collection, including the following studies: Experiencias del paisaje: Representación audiovisual, by M. Bel Riera; La Ciudad del Paisaje: by Francisco Mota; Paisatge I Silenci, by Miquel Frontera Serra; Lugares da paisagem: ruína e experiência do tempo-desenho, by Vítor Silva; En torno a los paisajes culturales: San Juan- Argentina, by Marina Inés de la Torre; Paisaje explotación, Las Kellys-Laura Marte; The other in the same, by Erik Smith; Paisaje sociales mexicanos: el lugar como contenedor de modernidade, by David Navarrete Escobedo.
The exhibition The Landscape Voices presents us with a conceptual, aesthetic and visual universe featuring a wide variety of mediums and artistic voices, in a constant dialogue between art and science. Like a Cabinet of Curiosities, an event that dates back to the Renaissance and was formalised as a place of wonder, where collections of unusual, singular and exotic objects were displayed, the exhibition offers us a glimpse into today’s representation of the landscape – visual, sound, literary, oral, historical and virtual -, through a cross-disciplinary language that embraces historical, cultural and artistic phenomena.
The Landscape Voices is on show at the Exhibition Pavilion of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto until February 3, 2024.