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Teresa Milheiro’s retrospective “1984”: Rebellion on the battlefield of the body

Teresa Milheiro’s solo exhibition 1984 is on at Zé dos Bois Gallery, in the heart of Lisbon, until the 20th of July. Milheiro’s work is a defiant act of rebellion, with 90 pieces from 1988 to the now. Her comprehensive retrospective has occupied four rooms of Zé dos Bois’s first floor. There are rings named Obsessive controlling tools, Pressure bracelets, a necklace called Desperately looking for a wrinkle, spiky fingerstalls that stop nail biting and a necklace that says: “Be botox, be fucking beautiful.” Milheiro’s work is critical, and at times radical, approaching the body as the biopolitical field.

The first room greets you with teeth from a necklace The aunt’s cow wears braces. The enormous teeth of a cow are ordered and covered with braces. Teresa Milheiro is a jewellery artist but her orthodontist skills prove to be as masterful as the skills of her own craft. Not a single tooth is out of line. She has applied human beauty standards on parts of a dead cow. It is radical, humorous and jarring. We are often told by dentistry and toothpaste commercials that a confident smile opens the doors. It is as if the unruly teeth keep the same doors closed and a person with crooked teeth is not allowed to be confident or to smile at all.

Then there’s the neckpiece Transmutations that plays with anatomy and precious stones. It’s a jaw bone where quartzs and amethysts are set. The jaw is electroformed in copper’s eternal embrace. Milheiro uses bones and teeth in spite of their uneasy qualities. A jaw bone is not something that people like to wear on their body. Bones should be buried in the ground, hidden from the living, they shouldn’t be around, reminding of the inescapable death. It’s unsettling and unnerving. Milheiro’s work is straightforward and her symbols universal. This is not an exhibition exclusively for the artsy crowd, it dares everyone to come and see it.

In 1984, Orwell depicts a surveillance control society very similar to the Soviet Union. The collective will is in submissive state of love for the Big Brother, the great leader with Stalin’s mustache. In Milheiro’s exhibition there is no love for the establishment nor for the collective submission. Her necklace with tens of eyeballs tangling from them, called Spy on I, points to the surveillance. Milheiro’s 1984 is a dark landscape filled with imagery of dark torture cells. It is unsettling and provokes thought on the current political systems around the world. According to Freedom House, only 84 out of 195 countries are free. Freedom House was formed in 1941 to raise awareness of fascist threat and since then it monitors the state of freedom and democracy around the world. Democracy is complicated and requires thinking and working through a huge amount of information. Human mind prefers simplicity. Those dark nightmarish prison cells exist in today’s world and are multiplying with each extremist politician gaining power. Milheiro’s objects and jewellery help to visualize what it could be like to live in a non–democratic country.

Her exhibition runs through the four rooms on the first floor of the gallery. Each room differs, especially the old kitchen with pink marble. All the works are in dialogue with the space and with each other. It is an adventurous exploration through the rooms that could as well be prison cells. Each room seems to hide a secret topic, a different history. The entrance to the gallery is opened to the streets, connecting the exhibition with Bairro Alto. In the third room of 1984 is Triunfo dos Porcos (the Portuguese title for Orwell’s Animal farm), a silver earring series made as cattle ear markers. In this work, as in many others, Milheiro uses numbers or words. Most of the earrings in the series are left blank, but some are etched with significant year numbers such as 1984, and 2020, 2021. The last two mark the years of our collective trauma, a reminder of the stark reality experienced not that long ago. The cattle markers also point to collectivism, to being in the same tribe or to being marked by the same owner.

On the other side of the wall are yellow noses made of cast glass. Each nose is unique in its size and shape. They seem to comment on the Covid times when a breath of air was potentially fatal. The nose series is unnamed, leaving it open to countless interpretations. It is a loaded image that could point to breath as the source of life and sense of smell as indicators of attraction or repulsion. It could also point to standards of beauty. Some noses are regarded as beautiful, some as ugly.

The final room is dimly lit, the ceiling is arched with red bricks. The walls are painted dark gray. Milheiro’s works have a soft yellow light thrown at them, it is all the light there is. The eyes adjust fast. There are compositions of doctor’s tools and syringes on the wall. The tools look as if they could be from a soviet doctor from the year 1984. The instruments create a blurry line between the healing and the torture. The eeriness sweeps in, evoking a sense of potential pain and suffering. It reminds me of my first visit to the KGB cells museum in my birthplace Tartu, Estonia. That prison was in the basement of the gray apartment building right next to my grandmother’s house.

The exhibition text on social media includes words that say: ”The bio-political instance, violence, control, alienation, obedience, incompleteness, subjectivity, dissatisfaction, docility, surviving and wanting to be.” They exist in Milheiro’s work. Her critical voice speaks in 1984 loud and clear. Her work is daring, her work is unapologetic and worth seeing. It grabs you and you can’t look away, even if you want.

With 1984 Milheiro has created a world where jewellery is not just adornment but a rebellion and a statement for keeping the freedom of mind and action. She is a force of nature to be reckoned with. Her’s is not a soft voice pleading for what is one’s right but a bold voice of an artist demanding it in the language of jewellery. The exhibition is curated by Natxo Checa and Manuel Costa Cabral. 1984 is a fitting tribute to Teresa Milheiro who was also a founding member of Zé dos Bois gallery, 30 years ago.

The exhibition is part of the second Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial. This year’s biennial focuses on political jewellery and power jewellery. Milheiro’s work has been political from the start. Her expansive solo show will add a potent voice to this event where more than 250 artists from around the world show their work. The courage of Milheiro’s 1984 is infectious. It reminds me to make a complaint at the local council. Milheiro’s work reminds us to rebel, stand out, make a contribution and create work that is individual, made from the core of the being. Just as her work is, absolutely Milheiro’s.

The exhibition will remain open until 20th of July, from Monday to Saturday, 6pm to 10pm, at Zé dos Bois Gallery.

Kaia Ansip is an Estonian jewellery artist who occasionally writes. She has studied Jewellery and Blacksmithing in The Estonian Academy of Arts and got her Master's Degree in 2022. Her final thesis was about the devastating wildfires in Pédrogão Grande, where she lives and works. Her work and heart is with the land. Ansip has also studied Philosophy in the University of Tartu. In 2024 she received Bergesio prize for writing about jewellery.

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