Appleton is currently hosting two exhibitions: António Júlio Duarte’s Rumble Fish and Gisela Casimiro’s in this new picture your smile has been to war.^[1]

The seventh film by António Júlio Duarte can be seen on the ground floor. With an extensive output widely regarded in visual arts and photography, the artist has been extending the poetic approach he applies to reality into film. Few are familiar with his work, but, as with his photographs, it has a very particular style resulting from his relationship with the camera. He subtly deals with the flow of the world, formally and conceptually, and describes himself as a documentary artist – yet, at the same time, he considers it impossible to look at and capture reality with a neutral eye, insisting that “it’s a fiction. The images may seem neutral, but this is a construction of an aesthetic stance on what is being done (…) As soon as something is framed, an attitude is taken towards what is being dealt with,” the artist clarifies^[2].

With its expressive plastic character, his work shows a penchant for long shots and low-resolution images, hinting at an extension of reality into a dreamlike, immersive universe. Without it being clear or explicit the sequence and follow-up of the previous films, we witness, here too, an accumulation of layers, of tension, of an appeal to the viewer’s imagination.

This is a sequence shot with doc-like elements, but it somehow evades a possible narrative purpose. Two fish in two cups of water, filmed on the set of Sinais de Serenidade Por Coisas sem Sentido by Sandro Aguiar (2012), have us absorbed and obsessed for several minutes in an attempt to discern a pattern – or not – of movements and shadows in the film material.

This was recorded during filming, which is important as it could be seen as a kind of behind-the-scenes, a resulting version that stems from and consciously adopts the space as well as the sound, where you can hear phrases like “Attention, we’re shooting” and “Cut”: “it’s the paradoxical index of the real but also the imagination, as it happens during the making of a fictional film”^[3].

Rumble Fish provides a glimpse, without cuts, of what appear to be indifferent, independent movements – two fish existing in two cups of water – but, on closer examination, we are actually witnessing a limitation, a reaction to sounds imposed by the environment in which it is recorded. This is not a neutral gaze. Just as fish are conditioned by glasses, it is conditioned by the artist’s framing. There is no apparent narrative, we see movements eternalised in the repeated projection, we start looking for details, for connections, attempting to deconstruct the oddness and ambivalence present in the film.

We find ourselves sensitive to shadows and reflections, between reality and dream. Our attention is grabbed by movements or, occasionally, stillness, wrapped up in what seems like a scenic universe that imparts a sense of continuity and immersion, giving the impression that we are watching that moment in real time.

The researcher José Bértolo, who penned the text on the exhibition’s flyleaf, pointed out that the title was borrowed from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film. This sort of appropriation takes us back to the history of cinema, “but this appropriation should be little more than just an ironic reference,” he adds. He clarifies that we should be contextualising this work within the documentary tradition, which is more observational than rhetorical, and this is how we should approach Rumble Fish, as an extension, a derivative and consistent body of work and research carried out by AJD.

Going downstairs, Gisela Casimiro, much like António Júlio Duarte, starts from observation for her artistic output and presents in this new picture your smile has been to war (verse taken from the poem For Assata by Audre Lorde, 1978). With precision and an aesthetic sensibility sensitive to her surroundings, the poet, author and artist presents analogue and digital records, in colour and black and white, of demonstrations, posters and walls that have been intervened upon or appropriated in some way through civic action or protest.

Streets have always been vital spaces for democratic expression and the exercise of civil rights. A stage for those pursuing significant changes in society, resistance and the fight for minority rights, gender equality, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, among others, and this is where Casimiro draws from and perpetuates moments that form part of his image portfolio.

She has always been fascinated by photography and, with a thorough methodology and community and social support work, she has been developing a recording practice that ends up resulting in autonomous discourses, generated through his selected images from her archive, memory. She tells us a story – or at least a possible version of it – by selecting images that reflect complaints and activists across the country. Racism, feminism and the right to housing are some of the topics depicted and reflect not only what cannot be silenced, but also what is being increasingly shouted by those whose voice the system is still attempting to mute.

In an attempt at historical reparation, trying “to erase or diminish collective oblivion about a time or an event”^[4], Casimiro is more of a storyteller than an intervener, positioning herself with a certain distance, suggested by the sentence written on the wall: I love your cause. The artist is the one who assembles and displays, the one who voices the voices that will not be silenced in an effort to magnify the multitude of struggles. With a discursive, narrative function, she looks for fairer and more inclusive possibilities when displaying photographs, posters and books that we can check out, including Angela Davis’s Freedom is a Constant Struggle or A Discourse on Colonialism Followed by A Discourse on Blackness by Aimé Césaire.

Gisela Casimiro has been developing important social and activist work, especially her work at INMUNE – Instituto da Mulher Negra em Portugal, participating in social and community empowerment projects. In this case, “a self-curatorial exercise, one she builds from memory. She tries to create a mechanism for the mnemonic recovery of the public space’s role as a structuring element in social struggles. The street speaks and Gisela is the one here who listens to it”^[5].

Both exhibitions can be seen until May 4, 2024.

^[1] The title of this article references a sentence from the book displayed in in this new picture your smile has been to war, Ñ Ṽ NOS MATAR AGORA, Jota Mombaça, First edition, Calluna e Apercu Pro, 2021.
^[2] AJD in the interview Entre Imagens for RTP. Available in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoVAm6gNoDs.
^[3] José Bértolo talking about the exhibition on the room sheet.
^[4] Excerpt from room sheet.
^[5] Excerpt from room sheet.