A line glides down the wall, slips away to wind through the natural world, dives down in a gasp to collect traces of the past and then ethereally re-emerges in a blue dream. Francisca Portugal, curator of the IV Capítulos exhibition at Fundação Carmona e Costa, used this thread to stitch together four different worlds – each populated by its own formal and visual narrative, shedding light on the identity and enquiry carried out by each artist.

On the nature of artistic language, Rainer Maria Rilke tells us that it is ‘common to all, but not made by anyone, for everyone is continually making it, the vast, whispering, fluctuating syntax (…). If you do not want to remain silent, all that is proper requires its own language… To say the same thing with the same words is not progress.”^[1] IV Capítulos is a place to honour these specific languages, the multiple forms of artistic expression and their individual narrative ramifications. While recognising the shared conceptual and visual references stemming from the artistic backgrounds of the featured artists, each room is a proposal for different worlds in different orbits, with their own excavations and words that unfold in the intimate sphere.

The show was initially prompted by Maria da Graça Carmona e Costa’s drive and interest in learning about and showing new practices by young artists. The gallery owner, promoter and contemporary art patron followed the work of curator Francisca Portugal and invited her to join the Foundation’s programme. Speaking to us, Francisca Portugal explains that, to honour her curiosity and preference for drawing, she invited ‘four emerging artists to present their first institutional exhibition in Lisbon, undertaking projects that open up drawing in its broadest concept’. Throughout four rooms, IV Capítulos presents works by Hugo Cubo, Laura Caetano, Bárbara Faden and India Mello, artists whose languages, whilst diverse in content and approach, engage in a dialogue about identity, memory and time. Even though they are of the same generation and share the same visual culture, each artistic practice here presented has a unique identity: ‘in reality, the approaches differ greatly and the exhibition’s concept is borne out precisely in its variety: the creation of four different chapters of a fictional narrative or an Art History’^[2].

The curator, who has been devoted to reflection and research into the making of history, particularly art history, mentions in the exhibition text that she considers that affinities and loose networks can play a crucial role in justifying or explaining specific events: ‘Today, art history is no longer categorised into avant-gardes or static styles. I propose an approach to Art History that, as demonstrated by these artists’ contributions, is a global and expanded ensemble of bridges, whether formal or informal (…). The structure of Art History may resemble the layout of a fictional work, where connections and narratives evolve from a diverse web’. The exhibition’s structure is specifically designed to allow the telling of a fictional story by means of individual exhibitions, proposing a sort of analogy to the act of reading, where each room offers its own narrative, enhancing the unique identity of each proposal within the exhibition as a whole. This format is also a reply to a recurring criticism among artists: ‘the scarcity of solo exhibition opportunities and the unreliability of institutions and curators. From a curatorial perspective, this approach to a group exhibition, focused on individual artistic identity, is radical. A conventional group exhibition would typically see the works scattered and jumbled around the different rooms,’ Francisca Portugal again writes on the exhibition text. It is important to also make it clear, in relation to the exhibition, that the works shown were specifically created for the venue, with the artists given total freedom. ‘This chance to exhibit in this space is unique, and the shared choice to develop specific projects for it was essential to ensure harmonious occupation and the emergence of immersive environments centred on each artistic practice^[3].

On the works presented:

Drawing inspiration from the comic book universe, Hugo Cubo combines the spontaneous with the monumental, turning the exhibition venue into an extension of his visual odyssey. The work reveals his infatuation with iconography and popular visual lingo, where enlarged figures painted directly onto the wall (mural with excerpts augmented from the drawing Criações: A Cabeça, 2024) create a dynamic background interacting with the charcoal and biros drawings, using the traditional drawing mannequin, unveiling a thought-provoking play between tradition and displacement (i.e. Cabeça tronco e membros: O Caminhante, 2024). The free, gut instinctive line becomes a reflection on the value attached to spontaneity and technical skill in the visual arts.

As always, Bárbara Faden takes us into a universe of her own, where nature, spirituality and memory live together. Characterised by a blend of abstraction and figuration, her works tap into dreamlike and emotional spaces, crafting intimate narratives to reflect the relationship between the human and the natural (i.e., This temperament, this temperature, 2024 and Romance, 2024). With a visual poetics moving between the tangible and the immaterial, Faden proposes a meditation on belonging and transcendence, fluctuating between micro and macro landscapes, which can be seen both as samples of an intimate harvest and as remote shots. These compositions weave together perspectives and depths in an imagination profoundly tied to the artist’s interests, intimate objects and ‘feeling-places’, namely in the showcase Desejos (2024), featuring the artist’s archive.

For her turn, Laura Caetano deals in a tense territory between destruction and reconstruction. Her works, using ephemeral materials, resemble mystical landscapes where fragments are readjusted into new narratives. Her work explores disappearance and permanence, that which is lost but leaves traces in the imagination. Laura’s initial inspiration for this exhibition stemmed from the frescoes in Matera, Italy. Her passion for art history and ancient European painting is manifest in the icons she paints using a brown, black, blue and grey palette that hints at the patina effect of hands, candles and other elements. A nostalgic tone is conveyed through the idea of ruin and fragments, emphasising the fragility of the nature of things.

India Mello has been conducting research into human behaviour and psychological phenomena through sculpture. Her works experiment with body and nature, exploring the tension between opposites: life and death, presence and absence. By building forms that dwell at the intersection between matter and imagination, Mello guides the audience into an introspective experience. The artist has devised a project in which drawing manifests itself using the three-dimensionality of the line in her sculpture (Satellite of Love, 2024) and cyanotype, achieved by amplifying objects from her daily life on printed fabrics that cover the entire room (Fotogramas, 2024). The primary purpose of these pieces is to create a physical experience for the visitors. The lighting design and colour choice are meant to elicit a feeling of both aggravation and calm, giving the drawing and sculpture new insights and meanings.

In bringing together these four artists, IV Capítulos surpasses a linear reading, allowing the audience to experience the exhibition site as a constellation of stories and sensations. It honours both the past and the changing present. It pays tribute to artistic individualities, but also to the collective power of art as a universal language through individuality. It reasserts the importance of establishing spaces where the experimental and the personal coexist, stretching the boundaries of what we understand as visual and narrative language. More than an aesthetic exercise, IV Capítulos invites us to reflect on Art History and the way it is shaped by expressions between the intimate and the collective.

The exhibition is open until February 1, 2025.

^[1] Rilke, Rainer Maria. (2009). Nature, Art and Language. Largebooks, p. 65.
^[2] Francisca Portugal on the exhibition.
^[3] Francisca Portugal on the exhibition.