Top

No retrovisor at College of Arts of the University of Coimbra, XXVI Cultural Week of the University of Coimbra

“52 artists have been invited to see drawing as a mirror, but a rear-view mirror. As if they were drawing in the rear-view mirror or embodying, as image-makers, the condition of being in the rear-view mirror. (…).”[1]

The rear-view mirror is a visual aid that lets us be aware of what we have left behind as we move ahead. This casting of the subject out of the field sensitises them to the negative distance they unwittingly establish between themselves and the forgotten reality, generating an ephemeral record of a particular involuntary past. This ability of the rear-view mirror is only made possible by the fact that it is, evidently, a mirror.

In the College of Arts gallery, where the No Retrovisor exhibition is being shown, we can appreciate the proposals of 52 artists who, in their own condition, present a never-ending range of out-of-field views. Apart from Jo Joelson’s film, a more literal approach to the curatorial principle, all the other works adopt a circularity that is both present and absent, rooted in a sort of escape. If we dwell on the idea that all these exhibited elements are, from a conceptual standpoint, mirrors, we may consider that nothing is actually there. All the works point to another direction, a reality built behind the viewer’s back, ignoring them, as a rumour of an unreachable or at least lost reality.

If the mirror was the only way to replicate real images[2] until the end of the nineteenth century, before the emergence of photography, nowadays it is an expansive device, encompassing the viewer’s body, perfidious and potentially hallucinogenic. Demoted from the vital task of reporting the mundane, the mirror adopts this heterotopic function[3] of bringing together the real and the non-real. This entire exercise in epoché allows the viewer to realise that, in this exhibition, they are surrounded by fragments, clues, vestiges and lies. Mirrors without a reflective surface – a vital paradox for understanding.

On the subject of this perfidy, this potential confoundment on a mirror’s surface, a line from Vergílio Ferreira’s novel Aparição comes to mind. During a moment spent reminiscing about his childhood, the protagonist tells us about an episode in which, as a child, he believed that his reflection in the mirror was that of a thief who had broken into his room. After panicking, his father told him what had happened, that the other person in the mirror was himself, forcing him to repeat the act. The next day, on a whim, he understood: “I went closer, mesmerised, I looked closely. And I saw, I saw the eyes, the face of this other person who dwelt in me, who was me and whom I had never imagined. For the first time I felt the shock of this living reality that was me, of this living being who had lived with me until then (…)”.[4]

Looking in the mirror, a daily, banal activity, a test of our capacity to be publicly seen, is not very telling in this case. Instead, it is important to see the mirror as a device, as a gateway to the awareness of the other inhabiting us. This was the exercise undertaken by the artists featured here: giving the rear-view mirror their work, attempting to understand and capture the understanding of its feedback.

No Retrovisor will be on show until March 22, featuring works by Albuquerque Mendes, Alice Geirinhas, Ana Catarina Fragoso, Ana Pérez-Quiroga, António Gonçalves, António Melo, António Olaio, Bruno Dias, Fernando J. Ribeiro, Filipe Romão, Francisca Carvalho, Gabriela Albergaria, Hugo Barata, João Belga, João Fonte Santa, João Jacinto, João Marçal, José Domingos Rego, Júlia Cruz, Juliana Julieta, Luís Alegre, Luís Silveirinha, Magda Delgado, Manuel dos Santos Maia, Manuel João Vieira, Mattia Denisse, Miguel Branco, Miguel Palma, Mimi Tavares, Nuno Sousa Vieira, Orlando Franco, Paulo Lisboa, Pedro Amaral, Pedro Cabral Santo, Pedro Gomes, Pedro Pascoinho, Pedro Proença, Pedro Saraiva, Pedro Tudela, Pedro Valdez Cardoso, Pedro Vaz, Pilar Mackena, Rita Gaspar Vieira, Rosana Ricalde, Rosi Avelar, Rodrigo Oliveira, Rui Algarvio, Tiago Baptista, Sara & André, Sílvia Simões, Simão Mota Carneiro, Susana Chiocca, Valdemar Santos and Jo Joelson.

 

[1] Excerpt from the exhibition text, by António Olaio.
[2] Sardo, Delfim. (2017). O Exercício Experimental da Liberdade. Lisbon: Orfeu Negro. p. 92.
[3] cf. Michel Foucault.
[4] Ferreira, Vergílio. (2005). Aparição. Lisbon: Bertrand Editora. p. 70.

Daniel Madeira (Coimbra, 1992) has a degree in Artistic Studies from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra and a Master's in Curatorial Studies from the Colégio das Artes at the same university. Between 2018 and 2021, he coordinated the Exhibition Space and the Educational Project of the Águeda Arts Center. Currently, he collaborates with the Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra (CAPC).

Signup for our newsletter!


I accept the Privacy Policy

Subscribe Umbigo

4 issues > €34

(free shipping to Portugal)