“Decipher me, or I’ll devour you“.

During the evening of May 17, 2024, wrapped in the stones of the Ancient Roman cryptoporticus of Aeminium (50 AD) in Coimbra, one could easily glimpse a bit of the sphinx that threatened Oedipus in Sophocles’ play (427 BC), embodied in sculptures such as the Portraiture of Trajan (100 AD) and the Portraiture of Vespasian (69-70 AD) – all of which are from the National Museum Machado de Castro’s collection.

Upon being introduced into the proposed exhibition setting, these marble Roman works are met by smaller sculptures derived from terracotta’s plasticity. Although reminiscent of Oedipus, they brought with them far more metaphors and insights into psychoanalytic theory than the Greek tragedy’s character may imply.

The objects are self-portraits carved by users of Centro de Apoio Social de Pisão, an institution that provides inpatient care for adults with psychiatric conditions.

The exhibition featured more than 1500 self-portraits, the vast majority of which were displayed on a large wooden stand: boards that were joined together but did not feel solid. This could be a nod to Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818) – and, in this way, the exhibition, which had already presented itself as a kind of self-discovery by bringing to mind the image of the sphinx – “decipher me or I’ll devour you” -, also becomes a perilous atmosphere of redemption.

How many nightmares are there in insomnia?

This scenario puts into context the exhibition Insomnia by José Luís Neto (Satão, 1966) alongside the users of Pisão, curated by Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra. It formed part of the convergent programme of AnoZero’24 Coimbra Biennial.

The artist – who has consistently been involved in the Portuguese and international art scenes, always using photography as the backbone of all the art orbiting his work – presents the unfolding of his research based on the 22474 and 22475 portfolios: photographs taken in 1913 by Joshua Benoliel during the ceremony to end the use of hoods in the Portuguese prison system.

Hoods were introduced in Portugal in 1884 to prevent inmates from recognising each other in prison. If, on the one hand, Insomnia welcomes more than a thousand terracotta self-portraits from Pisão, on the other Neto expands his photo research and exposes a historical nightmare.

He symbolically, narratively and also literally expands the portrait images, originally produced in the tiniest size and which, through this artistic process, are stretched and enlarged. Carefully printed on linen panels: a material similar to the hoods worn by the people Benoliel had photographed.

As the AnoZero biennial is based on Luis Bruñel’s The Phantom of Liberty (1974) as its conceptual underpinning, we must remember that horror figures are often incapable of seeing their own reflection in the mirror – for a creature to see its own reflected image demands a life that a ghost or vampire does not have.

Even the terracotta images, in dialogue with José Luís Neto’s panels, also draw attention due to the symbolism of lifelessness. When we examine an original perspective of the Old Testament, we believe that human genesis arises from the clay doll: if the “double” on display is made of clay, then is it deprived of the divine breath?

Furthermore, if we evoke the beliefs of spiritist religions, we realise that a living being has an embodied soul during its lifetime, but its spirit is freed during sleep to roam on other planes. From a spiritualist perspective, Insomnia can also signify a sort of soul imprisonment during life.

Notes from underground

When Insomnia opened on May 17, the audience walked through a setting in which there is usually not much activity: Coimbra’s Roman cryptoporticus.

The site’s qualities, which could have been an issue, turned out to work well: the visitors’ difficult flow through the event, due to its sheer number, fuelled the “claustrophobic” idea mooted by the narrative of the curatorial process. This idea of image reflections, stared at and the mass of terracotta objects somehow echoed with the small crowd that made the Machado de Castro National Museum resemble an anthill.

This scenario also brought up a recurring and often neglected challenge in almost all Iberian exhibitions: accessibility. This is a topic that requires a broad debate throughout the artistic community and is intimately tied to any investigation surrounding the debate on the right of bodies to move around.

The moment the public entered the exhibition site, something like a “rock cube” with José Luís Neto’s works and those of the Pisão users, they experienced something enormously immersive. An artistic gesture offering plenty of attention and no stimuli from the outside world. The exhibition’s lighting adds even more masks to the portraits, these forged with shadows, increasing the number of layers in the exhibition, which, despite having an intimate atmosphere, retains a tension all along the way, a suspense that dares even the bravest to find the courage to sleep in that place: Insomnia.

Towards the end of the vernissage, Fernando Fadigas (Oeiras, 1968), a sound artist, gave a performance. He had collected rock and metal sounds from the depths of Aeminium and laser-carved one of the images from José Luís Neto’s panels onto a vinyl disc that helped him craft a sound production on his pick-up truck. Fadigas’ sound echoing off the cryptoporticus walls meant that, for a few minutes, all the elements on display seemed to have a life of their own, and it was certainly not a dream. It was impossible to sleep.