From dreams and hope stems a bed – Maria Marques Moderno presents it for the first time in UmbigoLAB’s Cover of the Month. Between whispers, Maria unfolds what lies beneath the bedsheet, retracing the path she took with a plaster bed along the cold Liege lanes. Moderno shines a light on the symbolic nature of everyday objects, the imprints of life and death that we etch into them. Both instinctive and ritualistic, it breaks down both physical and immaterial paths. This is a three-party conversation, in a confidential ring that only the comfort of a bed and friendship can provide.

Maria Miguel Café: I understand we arranged to talk today, but I’m getting quite sleepy… I just want to lie down with you and the three of us to sleep all together, so close we end up in the same dream. Would you two like to lie down next to me? Things are sometimes better seen from the bottom up, horizontally.

Maria Marques Moderno: That’s beautiful! I actually am lying down, we’re already synchronised.

Laurinda Branquinho: I’m also comfy with a blanket over me.

MMC: Only dreams and hope are missing. What do you dream about, Maria?

MMM: Daydreaming is my favourite kind of dream. That’s just part of being a child, still alive. The fault of being constantly daydreaming always lies with my will. Dreams are different when I’m asleep, I have colourful ones and I always dream about people who are in my life, who tell me things. I carry a notebook where I write down those who come up more and those who don’t, and I try to understand what the messages mean.

LB: Does daydreaming almost always come from desire, from hope?

MMM: Yes. If I want something, I want it a whole lot. I like to translate dreams into the real world, to make them manifest from the inside out. Will is the materialisation of Hope.

LB: Did you dream about this bed?

MMM: I haven’t dreamt of it, but it comes from a will – the fulfilment of many longings and, although it is not ready to go outside, it does go out on crutches and walks with a slight limp. But ultimately it just keeps failing to give me what I need: I can’t lie down in it.

MMC: You are never alone in your dreams with your eyes closed. And with them open? In this play you’re always with the city and the light, with your friends who help you drag your bed everywhere…

LB: And they care about the bed, as if it were theirs too.

MMM: I’m always with them, anywhere. The bed is mine, but sometimes people lie next to me in the actual bed, the ones in the rooms. I am in company even when I’m alone. This is everyone’s bed. I made it myself, it’s my height, but not my width. It’s a body-and-a-half bed, enough for one person to cuddle up next to me.

LB: It fits two people, but, when it doesn’t, you just can’t lie down on it… Do you think the bed emerged at this point because you were away from yours, the one in your room? I think I can see a connection between the place you were in (far from your home, in another country) and the object you built, a bed, with no mattress or stable structure to lie on.

MMM: I have never been away from home for so long, yes. This project was born when I was on Erasmus in Liege (Belgium), the place I lived for six months, and it was always really cold in winter. It turned out not to be a cosy city, it was quite hostile. I don’t remember exactly how the bed came to be, but I’m almost certain that it came from that need for comfort, for a place that could keep you comfortable, that could hold you. Also, it was always so dark and the bed helped to lighten that up a little.

MMC: The candles that you light on the bed serve two purposes: to warm you up and to ask for wishes.

MMM: I think the candles embody the wish. They warm and brighten. I enjoy it when the candles are just lit, to look at them and not think about a single thing. I reckon we are always thinking about so many things and, sometimes, to be in bed is to not think about all that. I like that spot, where all is silent. It also came from some Angels that my mother used to put in my cot and my bed when I was younger (until I was about 5 or 6). Four little angels, one at each end of the bed, as if to protect the sleeping environment. I wanted to concretise that: to turn the bed into a sacred, protected spot.

LB: Beautiful! Although it is fragile, it is sheltered within a warm ring of fire. But why do you take it outdoors?

MMM: A bed is a comfortable and intimate place, but also where people get sick and die. Because it is such a vulnerable and intimate setting, I wanted to provide a contrast with the outside. It is intimate, but it does not have to be strong, it can be fragile: fragility and intimacy walk together. A bed is meant to be inside the room, indoors, not outdoors. My idea was to make it a sort of light outside.

MMC: Why do you carry it around to different places? Were you just looking for the right place or does the very movement of walking and bearing it on your body generate something ritualistic in you that thrives on its own?

MMM: I really don’t know, I think it happened with the movement. I stumbled across a wheeLBarrow, I put the bed on it, so it had wheels, it could walk, and I started carrying it along the road, as if it were a car. There were several places I wanted the bed to be. I especially wanted it to be by the River Meuse, which I passed every day. I found myself just heading towards the river, stopping off at a few places that made sense, intuitively each time.

LB: It seemed that you were trying to push the bed as hard as your body did during your stay in Liege, to grow into a body, to visit the same places as you did.

MMM: Yes, I suppose the bed in a way ended up taking the same path I used to follow every day from my house to college. I walked all the time because it was a small town, so I would cross the same road several times and I was always alert. It was intuitive to take the bed to the places I knew, to make it do what I did. To occupy territory and confront it.

MMC: And when did you realise that your walk had come to an end?

MMM: When I got to the bridge over the river. I stayed halfway across.

MMC: Is that the place where you left it?

MMM: No, I left it in a park, outside: it belongs there. The next day it started snowing. Half a metre of snow. Water met it again, in a different state. The wind did not blow out the candles, the snow did. The bed is as hungry as I am, it always wants more.

MMC: The snow feels as if it has declared the end, laid it on the ground in the street where it belongs, snuffed out the candles, as if feeling that it already had all the dreams and hope it ever needed – it was already protected. The candles at the ends resemble a kind of aerial runway, a landing strip, a signalling where the body should go. But there is no room for the body. The duality always seems to be intimate and external, street and bedroom, hot and cold, fire and snow.

MMM: I believe that these contrasts are present in my work in different ways. This was the first time I had ever seen snow like this, in the city, and I think the bed had a lovely ending.

LB: How do you feel about its loss? You built it to materialise dreams, but it ended up vanishing because of the condition you were in. You would never have been able to bring it to Portugal, you knew you were going to lose it as soon as you started making it. An action that spells tragedy…

MMM: Wishes and hope may disappear in their material form, but they never really do. I sometimes feel that there have to be sacrifices and I have to let things go. I knew right from the start that, if I built it, I would not be able to transport it, but sometimes ownership of the pieces is not the issue. Even today I have no idea if the bed is still there or not, maybe not anymore, but I don’t want to find out either, I want to accept that that was its fate.

LB: And what is your fate for this year?

MMM: I honestly do not know. Things happen intuitively and I end up knowing where I need to go at the right time.

MMC: What if you could make a wish?

MMM: I’m currently in São Miguel, on the world’s most beautiful island, where the fog is heavy. I can’t never see a thing a metre away. Today, for the first time since my arrival, it was sunny and I could see it all, the sea and the horizon, the craters and the lagoons… I wish I could see the whole of things as they are. Hopefully.

MMC: I guess this conversation with you surrounded by water is symbolic. Just like the bed turned out to be.

MMM: The bed became insular. The insular of the inner island.

LB: That is very beautiful… That, this…

MMC: I was lulled by the island and the fog and the sun… You have painted such a lovely picture that I reckon I’ll fall asleep this time. I’m going to shut my eyes. Would you like to join me? Although we are far away, I know we see each other in our dreams.

LB: I want to, a lot.

MMC: I’m going to light the candles, it’s cold in here. One for me, one for Laurinda, one for you, Maria. And the last one?

MMM: For the sea. For the water. For all the others. The ones who are in bed with me.