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Previous Exhibition

01/07/2017 - 30/09/2017

Collaboration ANA CRISTINA CACHOLA

Igor Jesus and Mariana Silva

Collaboration in and through artistic creation has a long lineage, one that expresses itself in the most diverse ways in the historiography of art and critical thought. Among the different collaborative predispositions oh this lineage, the most easily recognizable can be found in the organization of the modernist movements-manifestos, in site-specific work, and in the foundations of relational art. Nowadays the focus is on collaboration as an immanent – but also speculative – practice that transforms the vertical organization imposed on the planet into a non-linear horizontality that, although not innocuous, attempts to subtract discursively from all world narratives. There ir no no-collaboration. This double negative becomes clearer (and increasingly positive) as we look upon the complexity and diversity of the collaborative practices we find in human and non-human experience. From pre-cognitive formats driven by feelings and affections to formats based on premediated collaborative intentions, collaboration assumes different contextual physiognomies that develop in relational modes that are always ethically and aesthetically informed – just like in the work of Igor Jesus (1989) and Mariana Silva (1983).

Both Igor Jesus and Mariana Silva follow up and build upon this collaborative shift, presenting us collaborations between people, non-human animals, texts, images, and disciplines.
Regardless of their different origins, the works by these two artists allow us to think about our contemporary visual culture in the light oh the impact of technological (inter)mediation, of the phenomenological and cultural complexity of a continually shared gaze, and of an artistic creation based on an ecological sharing oh knowledge. In the Quetzal Art Centre, Igor Jesus and Mariana Silva will present work that does not imply a collaboration between the two artists, but rather brings about collaboration as a ubiquitous presence in contemporary art.

Igor Jesus presents a piece that convokes collaboration as a corporeal drive: the manual intervention on the sheet produced for the exhibition at the Quetzal Art Centre. This is not about replacing machine with hand, or a debate on the triad manual-analogic-digital, but rather about looking at collaboration as a cause and effect of a systemic artistic field that requires an inclusive intentionality, one that is aware oh the role of the other in the existence of the work of art. In this prespective, only the contact with the viewer can complete a work of art, as the materials utilised in its creation make visible this relationship and inscription. The research notes for a show by Igor Jesus are also part of this leaflet, revealing the dialogic ontology of contemporary artistic creation.

In Do ponto de vista do mamífero (From the Mammal’s Point of View), Mariana Silva questions the relationship between human and non-human individuality and a group behaviour that reveals and (also) creates models of social (inter)relations. The different moments of a broad-spectrum scientific chronology – which includes disciplines such as biology, ethology, sociology, psychology, but also computing sciences and robotics – are presented with their utopian-dystopian tensions, forcing us to review our analytical and visual paradigm for existence. Throughout centuries, living beings were identified, observed, and preserved as static, generic or standard-sample entities. Things are different now, and science looks at them considering movement, grouping, relationship-collaboration, and absence. The tendency to anthropomorphise nonhuman behaviour, the gaze as an attempt to control and set free, the group as a behavioural until, all collaborate in Mariana Silva’s planetary reflection.
The work of art is because it is collaboration.

(curator Ana Cristina Cachola)

 

Ana Cristina Cachola
Ana Cristina Cachola holds a PhD in Culture Studies and a Master degree in Communication and Cultural Management from the Catholic University of Portugal, where she has been a Visiting Lecturer on different art subjects. She was awarded a PhD stipend from the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) to conduct her PhD research on representations of Portuguese cultural identity in contemporary art. She is co-editor of Diffractions – Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture and member of the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC).  She works as an independent curator since 2008 and writes about contemporary art for several outlets.

Mariana Silva
Mariana Silva (1983, Lisbon) graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Relevant solo shows include, among others: Audience Response Systems (2014, Parkour, Lisbon); Environments 2013 (e-flux, New York), with Pedro Neves Marques; The Organization go Forms 2011 (Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon); Relevant group shows include, among others: Gwangju Biennial, 2016 (Gwangju, Korea); HYPERCONNECTED, 2016 (V Moscow International Biennial for Young Art at MMOMA – Moscow Modern Art Museum); EDP New Artists Prize, 2015 (EDP Foundation, Lisbon) Europe, Europe, 2014 (Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo); Indie Film Festival: Moving Image, 2012 (Cinemateca de Lisboa, Lisbon). Silva is the recipient of the EDP New Artist Prize 2015 (Lisbon, Portugal) and the BES revelation prize 2008 (Porto, Portugal). She was artist in residence at the Gasworks, London (2016) and the ISCP, New York (2009).
In late 2017 Mariana Silva will open a solo show at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.

Igor Jesus
Igor Jesus (1989) lives and works between Lisbon and Berlin, where he is an artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien until December 2017, with a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He is one of the nominees for the EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award 2017. He holds a BA Degree in Sculpture from the School of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. In 2013, he was funded by the ICA (Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual) to direct a short film. Among his most recent solo exhibitions stand out Amar-te os Ossos (2017), Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon; Chessari (2016), Galeria Solar, Vila do Conde; A última carta ao Pai Natal (2015), Galeria Filomena Soares; and Debaixo do Sol (2015), Appleton Square, both in Lisbon. In 2014, he presented the exhibition Old School #32, Lisbon, and in 2013 Peso Morto, Espaço Zero, Tomar.
Among his group shows stand out HangarOut – EntreLinhas, Palácio Marquês de Abrantes (2017); in 2016, Topologias del Aura, Galeria Bacelos, Madrid, Abaixo as fronteiras! Vivam o design e as artes, Diálogo entre o design e obras da coleção António Cachola, Elvas Contemporary Art Museum and Pátio da Galé in Lisbon, Ponto de Partida – uma seleção de obras da coleção de arte contemporânea Figueiredo Ribeiro”, Quartel, Abrantes; and, in 2015, The Iynx knows no boundaries, Fondation d’Entrepise Ricard, Paris.

More information: read the publication Collaboration I, II, III, VI.