Oficina Marques

Oficina Marques

by | Jan 17, 2023 | Art & Life

“Today we live in a society in which access to goods is so easy that we end up distancing ourselves and forgetting the processes, the rhythms, the know-how. It is time to reconnect with life.”

Your artistic world is filled with traditional symbolism, mysticism, culture, curiosity, and infinite beauty. Where do you find your inspiration?

The work of OM, although plural, follows 5 basic themes that can appear alone or added to a larger narrative: the sea, the forest, the body, the faith and the city of Lisbon. The sum of these five elements, we call Tusa de Viver.

 

Where did the passion for anatomy, in artistic representation, come from?

It is in bodies that we live, are and relate to the world, it is in bodies that we have pleasure and faith, so our work celebrates the body and human life.

 

How important is the reuse of materials in the work sphere?

Materials are tools for telling stories.

Working with “things that once were” allows us to exercise a new way of seeing objects; they are like skeletons that will eventually gain new muscles, new tendons, a new skin, and a new life.

The manual and tactile choice of raw materials privileges those that are part of everyday life, discarded furniture and objects, waste, and also organic materials such as wood and clay. The materials themselves are a constant source of inspiration.

Oficina Marques has pieces by Gezo and pieces by José, and also pieces that were made by both of you: what are the biggest differences you feel in creative terms when you work separately and together?

OM was born from the need to materialize and tell stories with our own hands, our work is very plural, we have pieces produced individually, some by Gezo and others by José, and we increasingly have more pieces made with four hands where there is a good balance between the two universes.

Each of us has a distinct universe, we are different in many aspects, and it is from this encounter that such a plural body of work develops. We usually say that OM’s identity is the result of this meeting of universes and different references, it is the constant dialogue and sharing (and also collision) of ideas that drives us forward.

 

In your interviews you talk a lot about “Tusa”, what is your greatest desire at the moment? Do you have any goals that you want to achieve in the near future?

Parallel to the signature pieces, creating a line of multiples. That is, pieces that are easier to reproduce and in that way make our work even more accessible to everyone.

 

Is there any work that has marked you in a special way?

Our growth has always been very organic, full of learning and key moments, in general all the pieces and exhibitions we do are important moments because we “force” ourselves to go deeper into our work process and to tell our vision of the world better and better, still we can highlight the Wooden Horse Sculpture, Panel for Avocado House restaurant or the Mother Goddess Panel.

 

What is your favorite part of creating an artwork? Do you prefer the creation, the idea, the exhibition?

Each phase of the process brings us different challenges and accomplishments, we enjoy them all. The idea and creation are very personal moments where we are involved intellectually and physically with the materials and the pieces. In exhibitions the pieces also belong to other people, it is a moment of encounter that we enjoy.

“Neptunia” in exhibition at Oficina Marques

 

Your art brings together the best of both worlds: reusing materials that should be at their end of life and then transforming them into aesthetically beautiful pieces of art. Do you follow any kind of specific format?

We want people to reflect on the value of life and time, so the manual record is very important in our work, hence the name chosen for the project being Oficina.

The fact that things are done manually by us, in an increasingly digital world, is also a way of positioning ourselves. We believe in and value manual work very much, as well as the human dimension of those who create with their own hands.

Today we live in a society in which access to goods is so easy that we end up distancing ourselves and forgetting the processes, the rhythms, the know-how. It is time to reconnect with life.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artists atelier, Lisboa.
September 20th, 2022.

ART

Gezo Marques shares with José Aparício Gonçalves the need to materialize and tell stories with their own hands. Together they form a team that celebrates the cycles of life, memories, scars and second chances. All with a great sense of humor.

LIFE

Gezo Marques was born in Brazil and lives in Portugal. He made his way through college with a degree in Media Studies and then took a different learning path, working for several ad agencies as an Art Director in both countries.

José Aparício Gonçalves graduated in Design and Master in Cultural Management, he has professionally developed his artistic work since 2010. He has navigated between painting and illustration, graphic design, printing, photography and video.

Oficina Marques

Pauliana Valente Pimentel

by | Sep 5, 2022 | Art & Life, Documentary, Photography

“I have always been fascinated by these men women who present themselves in a dignified way exposed to the danger of the night and living on the margins. For years I have been building up the courage to approach them and to get to know them intimately. At the beginning the feeling is always of a “blind date” I never know what I will find and that is fascinating.”

Pauliana Valente Pimentel: documentary photographer, photojournalist or visual artist?

I have never distinguished and have always had some difficulty in putting photographic practice into “boxes”, I have both worked for magazines and newspapers and I work for galleries and museums where I exhibit regularly. I am a bit of all of that, my photographic practice is linked to the investigation and documentation of a certain reality.
You could say that I am a visual artist, since I live from my art, and with this art I create documents, and these documents are usually journalistic in some way, since they reflect contemporary political and social issues. For the last ten years I have been focusing on social issues in various countries. Youth, nomadism, gender, and social groups living on the margins are recurrent in my work. In my series the intention is always to build a narrative, recording everyday situations placing the photographic image between documentary and poetry, in a mixture of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Despite all the difficulties of being a visual artist, I have passion for what I do, and I enjoy all the processes: the research, the meeting, the editing, the thinking of the appropriate installation for the presentation space – whether it is in a museum, a gallery, the street. I like the inaugurations, and people’s reactions. I like the possibility of the work being published in a book, allowing it to be registered for “eternity”, or seeing my work in the home of a friend or collector. Teaching is also very rewarding, being able to share my knowledge and learn as well.

 

In 2018, you stated, and we quote, “I’m interested in the island dimension, to understand how the youth moves, what kind of groups exist, the kind of openness and freedom they have and how it manifests itself.” “Youth of Athens” (photography + film, 2012, Greece), “Quel Pedra” (photography + film, 2016 – Mindelo, São Vicente Island, Cape Verde), are two examples of projects you have done. What differences, in behavior, do you observe among the young people you have portrayed?

This statement comes from the work I did on youth on the island of São Miguel in the Azores. Youth became recurrent when the crisis in Greece was triggered. The series “Youth of Athens” (2012) reflects the European crisis and how young people adapt and face the future. After Greece, it was the young people of Northern Europe, a series called “The Passenger” (2012), a train trip I made through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, portraying young artists trying to make a living from their art. In these series I was confronted with a Europe that was being questioned, where the experiences of the parents no longer served, and new ways of living had to be reinvented.
In “The Behaviour of Being” (2015) I have documented a group of young artists in residence in the Algarve, in the middle of nature. Coming from a big capital – London – I understood the importance of slowing down and creating in the middle of nature, away from social networks, and how this experience could influence the artistic process.
Youth interests me because it is in this phase that we believe we can change the world, where genuineness and the capacity for transformation emerges, where everything is put into question, and everything is felt in an extreme way.
“Quel Pedra” (2016) portrays a group of transgender youth on the island of St. Vincent in Cape Verde. It was in Mindelo that I discovered that there is a myth that says that whoever sits on a certain stone becomes gay between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, they like to wear women’s clothes, makeup, and to be called by women’s names. There is still a very strong intolerance towards homosexual people in many African countries, in some cases motivated by religious convictions, in others by ignorance. Many Africans are forced to immigrate to Europe. The idea of this work was to confront the viewer with their prejudices by challenging the conventions and norms about human identity. Simone de Beauvoir said, “One is not born, but rather become a woman”, and perhaps this work was intended to unravel what it means to be a woman nowadays.
From the island of São Vicente, I went to the island of São Miguel in the Azores for the series called “The Narcissism of Small Differences” (2019) and portrayed the young Azoreans. A paradoxical paradise in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with ancient traditions, a stratified and isolating society. The title refers to Freud’s writings, where the idea of small differences is addressed as the basis of the feelings of strangeness and hostility that arise among peoples. In this work, as in all the others, I am interested in difference for its genuineness and not in confrontation. I am interested in creating a dialogue. As an island I encountered young people alienated from the world and turned on their own differences, melancholic and fragile who have their own cultural restraint and the transgression typical of their age, reflecting an authentic and charming side.

 

Your work demands a close approach with others. How do you create this almost personal environment with those you photograph?

I am incapable, anywhere I am photographing people, of arriving, photographing, and leaving. If I’m doing a job for a magazine, where I have two days, it’s impossible to create a relationship. But even then – I don’t use zoom – I have to be next to the person and feel them – to say my name, to feel them, to make them laugh. What I really like in my work is meeting people, getting to know them, even if they don’t speak my language, even if it’s in sign language, as happens in some countries. But still, I can be with a person for an hour drinking tea, just looking, laughing, and drawing. It takes time.
In these personal works, I spend a lot of time with my portrayed people, and we often become friends, accomplices, because in reality there is an exchange. In reality I am “stealing their soul” – not that I really believe that, but they are giving me their soul and I have to give it back in return. For me portraiture is a sacred thing, there has to be a mutual respect and that gives me great excitement. For example, in the work I did in Conde Redondo about prostitution of transgender youth (Make up, 2011), it was very difficult at the beginning. For years I had to build up the courage to approach them …but this is part of the process and the excitement. I have always been fascinated by these men women who present themselves in a dignified way exposed to the danger of the night and living on the margins. For years I have been building up the courage to approach them and to get to know them intimately. At the beginning the feeling is always of a “blind date” I never know what I will find and that is fascinating. My images come from the trust and complicity with the portrayed, it is always a collaborative work.
Then there are countries where people are more open than others, in Cape Verde we fell in love with each other and I had immediate access to their intimate lives, whereas in the case of the work I did in Dubai about the Arabs (Empty Quarter, 2015, 2018), it was extremely difficult to get to their intimacy – the work had to be done in several moments. My most recent work on Algarve about the gypsy communities (Faro-Oeste, 2020), I first had to get permission from the heads of the various communities and only then gain the trust of each family portrayed.

Diaspora. What responsibilities do you feel when you are photographing diaspora themes?

The responsibility for me is to do a thorough research and be as faithful as possible to the reality that I find, regardless of the theme.
“Afrodescentes (2021)” was a work developed at the invitation of António Pinto Ribeiro, for the group exhibition “Europa, Oxalá”, which has so far been exhibited at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and is now going to the “Afrika Museum” in Belgium, where I portrayed some young migrants – non-white Europeans who live in Lisbon and belong to the generation after mine.
In this project, I was interested in understanding if these descendents, children or even grandchildren of African repatriates still have the memory of that colonial legacy present in their cosmopolitan daily lives, and if they were born in Europe, to what extent their African roots are present in their daily lives.

Is there a setting or community that you aspire to photograph or film?

I am starting a project that portrays some Lisbon teenagers – young “teenagers” who are transgender or who don’t identify with any specific gender.

What comes first: the image, the visual concept or the message?

Everything is intertwined, of course. But, for me, the concept comes first, it always starts from the discovery of a certain reality, then comes the images that I build, and after all this experience the message emerges, which can be interpreted in different ways, from the imagetic narrative that I build.

“Quel Pedra” (2016) portrays a group of transgender youth on the island of St. Vincent in Cape Verde.

You studied Geology, the science that studies the Earth. When, and how, did you begin the transition to photography?

My initial education is in sciences. I graduated in Geology at the Faculty of Sciences, did my Master’s in Dynamic Geology and worked in research. Photography has always been a part of my life, and initially I did travel photography and published in Grande Reportagem and other magazines, not only photography but also text about my experiences. It was in 2005, when I started the photography course of the Gulbenkian Program, of creativity and artistic creation, that my life changed, and I started to dedicate myself to authorial projects. After the course I abandoned Geology to dedicate myself 100% to photography, where I joined the collective Kameraphoto and Galeria 3+1 Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon.

 

You are a Professor of Authorial Photography in schools such as ETIC, you organize workshops on “Photographic Narratives” regularly at Casa Independente, Lisbon, in Algarve and now also in international schools. Also, 3 months online mentoring with the creation of a project with national and international students. Did teaching appear in your career as an accident, or was it something you always felt a vocation for?

I have always enjoyed sharing knowledge and I have always enjoyed teaching. I left home at 18 and earned money tutoring math, physics and chemistry. After the Gulbenkian Course and when I joined the collective, with the exchange I had with other fantastic photographers, I felt ready to start teaching photography – how to create a narrative, how to approach a certain theme and also what is this authorial photography, how to make an exhibition or an authorial book.
Now, at this stage of my life, I am ready to start a PhD, the sciences have shown me the importance of research and theorizing, and I feel that at this point in my career I am finally ready and able to do theoretical research on my artistic practices.

“Quel Pedra” (2016) portrays a group of transgender youth on the island of St. Vincent in Cape Verde.

Do you still remember your first camera and your first picture?

My first camera, which I still have, was a Canon AE1.
The first picture I have no idea…

 

Can you share what you are currently creating in the areas of photography and filming?

I have a new project yes, as I mentioned before, it is about teenagers in Lisbon who don’t identify with a specific genre. Recently I did two projects – one for the collective exhibition “Europa Oxalá” which was at the Gulbenkian and will now go to the Afrika Museum in Tervuren, Belgium – about Afrodescendants and another Faro-Oeste about the Algarve gypsy communities – which was at the Faro Museum and the Lagos Cultural Center and will be heading north.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, Lisboa.
14th July 2022.

ART

Her journey as a photographer began in 1999, when she held international workshops with renowned photographers, including David Alan Harvey, known for his photographs for National Geographic and the Magnum Agency.

In 2005, she attended the program of the Calouste Gulbenkian Creativity and Artistic Creation foundation in the area of ​​photography.

Pauliana was part of the Kameraphoto collective that imitated the model of the Magnum Agency and which in 2014 closed its doors due to financial difficulties.

In 2016 she founded with other photographers the collective the “N’WE” collective, among them were: Céu Guarda, Sandra Rocha, Guillaume Pazat, João Pina, Martim Ramos, Jordi Burch, Valter Vinagre, Augusto Brázio and Nelson D’Aires . Through the collective, they photographed political and economic instability in Portugal, among other topics.

She published her first book in 2009, VOL I, and in 2011 Gulbenkian published the book Caucase, Souvenirs de Voyage, in which she and Sandra Rocha recreate Calouste Gulbenkian’s journey to the Caucasus through photography.

In 2018, choreographer Vânia Rovisco was inspired by a video recorded by her to create a choreography that was presented at Teatro Micaelense during the Walk & Talk festival on São Miguel Island in the Azores, where Pauliana also exhibited and held an artistic residency.

She exhibited in several countries, namely Portugal, United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Cape Verde, Dubai, among others. In Portugal, she exhibited in Porto at Maus Hábitos, on the island of São Miguel (Azores) as part of the Tremor festival.

LIFE

Pauliana Valente Pimentel is a Portuguese photographer borned in Lisbon, 1975.

She studied at the Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon and graduated in Geology at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where she worked as a researcher.

Her journey as a photographer began in 1999.

Kruella D’Enfer

Kruella D’Enfer

by | Jul 18, 2022 | Art & Life, Illustration, Urban Art

“The things Angela sees as negative, are almost a fuel for Kruella to present herself the way she does and to work on the ideas and concepts she works on, and the good things from Kruella bring a lot of magic, realizations and wisdom into Angela’s life.”

Kruella, did you always know what you wanted to do as an adult?

No, I wanted many things. As a child, I imagined myself designing dresses for runway shows, because my mother was a seamstress and I thought we could be a team, and because I used to look at fashion magazines from the 90s that she had at home. As a teenager I wanted to be an architect and used to drew blueprints of my dream house. Going to college was a drama because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I went to Lisbon because my friends from Tondela all went there and I ended up going there a little bit because of it, rather than consciously deciding on a course.

 

Mystery and magic are constantly present in your work. Are you aware of the origin and reasons for this interest of yours?

I was born on a stormy Halloween night, in the middle of a village near Tondela. The interior of Portugal is very strong in mysteries, legends of witchcraft, myths, superstitions, but I also think that the fact that I spent a lot of time alone as a child, playing in a very rural environment, surrounded by nature and animals, fed my imagination a lot.  And the things I loved most – cartoons I watched or stories I heard – had those themes and they were my escape and the way I traveled in my own mind.

 

And do you have any rituals of your own when you start a project?

I tend to get a little anxious the day before I start a project and I always sleep badly because I go to bed already thinking about work and thinking of all the ways it could go wrong. I like to organize my desk because if everything is disorganized and full of junk my brain goes crazy, and I really accumulate a lot of junk, but I need everything to be in the right place so I can concentrate.

Atelier

Was using a heteronym to represent you as an artist, Kruella D’Enfer, a natural choice, or did it happen because of a specific moment in your career? 

It was natural because I began to realize that I could do something in the field of illustration when I started meeting other artists. Then, as I had contact with the world of graffiti, which consequently taught me how to spray paint and gave me a sense of larger scales, I had to create my own tag and it came from there.

 

And by the way, what is the origin of the heteronym?

Basically, I googled villain names and of course, within the Disney universe, I had many options. Cruella from 101 Dalmatians, was the one that sounded good to me and fit perfectly with my shy personality, I created a tough cover for those who didn’t know me (laughs) and then I adapted it to Kruella because I realized it works better as a tag, as a set of letters, as a signature and gave it a more personal touch. Kruella d’Enfer makes it more charming and complete.

 

How much of Ângela Ferreira is Kruella D’ Enfer?

I always took refuge in Kruella for the creation of this idea of Freedom, of doing what I want, of getting into a strong, easy-going, positive, mysterious, funny character.
Angela (I write and sign without an accent, go ahead and judge me.) has an introverted and closed side and has many unresolved things, which I don’t love, but have been learning to accept and mostly working on it with therapy… and eventually, without realizing it, Angela and Kruella started to merge naturally. The things Angela sees as negative, are almost a fuel for Kruella to present herself the way she does and to work on the ideas and concepts she works on, and the good things from Kruella bring a lot of magic, realizations and wisdom into Angela’s life.

Ophiussa Brewery, 2021/2022

Kruella, you have your work beyond the Portuguese borders, and you don’t have an agent representing your art. There is all this behind-the-scenes work that implies persistence and career management. Do you like this challenge?

I like it a lot. I am very proud of this freedom that I am conquering and of the management knowledge that was inevitable to learn. It is sometimes exhausting to do everything alone, from looking for clients, managing the website, online store, social networks, sending mail on time, answering emails, making production, knowing how to disconnect and rest, looking for inspiration, going to exhibitions, preparing exhibitions, making a good balance between commercial work and personal work, but everything can be achieved.

 

Are you aware that your art positively impacts other artists, illustrators, and designers?

I am aware of that because I am told so. I like to be in contact with other artists and I like to give them feedback when I really like what they are doing. It’s also nice to feel that feedback in relation to what I do, especially from those who I really admire the work of.

“ISOLATION DREAMS”
December 2020 / Crack Kids, Lisbon, Portugal

Is there any kind of project, service or brand that you would like to work on artistically?

I would love to make a sculpture for Burning Man for example, if we’re into thinking big. Or, I don’t know, … designing and building a whole set for a fashion show for a luxury brand. Or paint an airplane.

 

Do you have a favorite medium, and, on the other hand, is there one that you are curious to work with?

I really like the spray, mixing the colors, the texture, the smell, the shape of the can, the colors…I love it and always will. I would love to venture out and buy an airbrush because of the similarity to the texture of spray, but softer and do things like that on canvas. I’ll see if I invest in one of those things.

Atelier

A curiosity, what did Lewis Hamilton tell you when you crossed paths in Formula 1 in Portimão, 2021?

The curiosity is more in what I said to him. He asked me if I did that huge drawing that was on the podium right there behind us (yes I was on the podium with him), I said yes, and he complimented me. Then I told him I did it in 24 hours and he was surprised, and I said with the biggest nerve in the world: “Yes, I am as fast as you man!”.
After that our interaction was in the ladies room because he got mistaken and I almost had a heart attack.

 

Another curiosity, have you ever worked the black and white?

Yes. I did a solo exhibition in Switzerland, called Mixed Feelings, and I divided the gallery in half and on one side there were only mega colored works, I even painted the wall where these works were with colored shapes too, and on the other side there were only black and white works, with a background also with black shapes under a plain background, to create this duality.

I have phases where I like to draw more monochromatic things and work on shadows and tones. Next year I would like to do a series of works with this technique and think about a new solo exhibition.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, Pandemónio, Lisboa.
9th May 2022.

ART

Portuguese visual artist and illustrator Kruella d’Enfer, Ângela Ferreira, has been delighting us with her enchanted visual world, evoking a deep sense of wonder with the fantastical, benevolent creatures that inhabit its dark and mysterious corners, be they mystical wolves or magical foxes. At ease painting both large-scale murals and intimist works on paper and canvas, her use of contrasting colours and geometric shapes brings age-old legends and myths to life, composing fantastic stories with a universal appeal. She has been exhibiting her work in solo and collective shows since 2010.

www.kruelladenfer.com

LIFE

Born in Tondela, North of Portugal, in 1988.
Ângela studied at ESAD – School of Arts and Design, Caldas da Rainha – but she dropped out college to pursue her art career, totally self-taught.
Loves to travel, food and her 3 cats.

Atelier

Nuno Saraiva

Nuno Saraiva

by | Jun 6, 2022 | Art & Life, Comics, Illustration, Political Cartoon

“The humor that makes us reflect seriously or even brings the ability to make us change a political opinion that we thought was unshakable.
It is this encounter, the fragility with the unshakable, that attracts me in drawing (and writing) humor.”

Nuno Saraiva is a name that no longer needs an introduction, but even so, we want to know: do we introduce you as a cartoonist, illustrator or artist?

I never thought much about it. I would say that to “cartoonist” I would add “political”, to “artist” add “visual” or “graphic”, I also make comics, which is where I come from. What best defines me will be the word “illustrator”, it really brings together in meaning everything I do. Even in wall paintings I am the illustrator.

 

João Paulo Cotrim said about Nuno: “you take too seriously the not being too serious”, is that something completely natural for you? With others, with work and with yourself?

Perhaps, in an intimate conversation somewhere on a long night, I would say with my eyes on the bottom of an empty glass, that I can’t stand egocentric people, that those who spend hours of their time polishing themselves in a kind of continuous masturbation irritate me. about your audience. You see a lot of that in these areas of the visual arts and there’s no patience. The small and colorful corner of Portuguese illustration will not be an exception. I don’t see myself in vanity and I feel some discomfort in the media exposure as a rule. What is completely natural for me is optimism and good mood, I’m not angry with the world and I only very rarely make this type of innuendo and always about the bottom of an empty glass. What I really take seriously is the final purpose of all my works, the humour, the meaning that I intend to offer, even if ambiguous, even if dramatic. And friends, friends I take them very seriously, they are peers of my work. João Paulo Cotrim, my dear fat friend, knew me very well when he wrote these lines.

 

This posture should make it much easier to work with people who are not exactly in your tune.

Those who know me know that relaxation will come from here, in fact too much relaxation – from the preliminaries of the idea to the critical political content, to the subliminal messages always present in my work, to the deadlines that I push to the limit of the bearable (laughs). I just don’t make it easy on one thing, derailing from the rhythm used by some of my colleagues: I refuse to present sketches. Due to my calendar always bursting at the seams, I got used to not wasting time on preparatory drawings, I never outlined alternatives or solutions B or C. Until now I’ve always done well, but if the client refuses the work I send finished – and it’s already happened – I just have to do it again or refuse. I don’t remember ever slamming the door.

REGRESSO DE D.PEDRO, A SALVAÇÃO DO BRASIL.
Inimigo Público, Série II.
Jornal Expresso, June 2022.

Your characters are fascinating. Well-natured, humorous, and sarcastic. Do you consider that your art meets what was done, for example, by Gil Vicente? Ridendo Castigat Mores, the Latin saying for “correcting manners through laugh”.

As opposed to the easy joke designed to exercise the muscles in your face, to laugh until you lose your breath, I appreciate much more that kind of humor that disarms us, strips our souls and throws us to the ground with a punch in the stomach. And then it lifts us up, but we still look for a line or point of reference to balance us, such is the disorientation caused by the shock. More: that hours later we are still thinking about it. Thinking. The humor that makes us reflect seriously or even brings the ability to make us change a political opinion that we thought was unshakable. It is this encounter, the fragility with the unshakable, that attracts me in drawing (and writing) humor.

“Canção de Lisboa”, trophy for the Especialidade category, Marchas de Lisboa, 2018.

Is there any social-political situation that you especially like to caricature?

In front of a sick Cavaco or a disconcerting Sócrates, I elect the People of this country. The people in their inertia, who don’t manifest themselves, who throw the state of things behind the State’s back. Raphael Bordalo Pinheiro spent his life satirizing the rotten elements of the agony of the constitutional monarchy, kings D. Luís and D. Carlos, the Church, the military, the loan sharks, the politicians, especially the ministers, and above all Fontes Pereira de Melo. Does anyone today remember to associate Bordalo with these figures that made him draw so much ink? No. Bordalo will always remain intimately connected to his anti-hero Zé Povinho, an always unpleasant representation of his contemporary Portuguese people, bowed down, submissive, and little inclined to revolt, or at best to revolt in a small, quiet way, expressed in a fist (this gesture in some cultures, including the Portuguese culture, has the same meaning has a middle finger).

 

Have you ever turned down jobs that went against your social beliefs and ethical values?

Yes, but respecting those same ethical values, I don’t want to reveal here who or which ones. Because they were people or companies who came to me but for some reason did not understand that I was not in the same line of thought, or who simply thought that a designer should be impartial, apolitical and accept whatever is asked of him. This kind of acephalous treatment still happens regularly with other colleagues of mine – namely in advertising agencies.

Santo António e o Mundo, trophy for the Especialidade category, Marchas de Lisboa, 2019.

In 2018, in an interview you gave to Diário de Notícias newspaper (23 September 2018) you mentioned intolerance, about being accused of discrimination when it comes to caricatures. Besides being asked to reduce the cleavage on your characters, have you ever made racial or gendered requests? All of this, has it ever caused you to limit your creativity due to society’s standards?

The political correctness card is alienating today’s society. We witness episodes that end up being counterproductive, like making black people Caucasian or attacking white people for daring to have dreadlocks – aren’t these reactions proto-racist? In my work, which I like to think of as evolving as opposed to regressing, before thinking of the objective (the reader), I think of the people who ask me for this work. Faced with the danger of a possible timely reaction that could lead to a lawsuit and threaten jobs, I think ahead and limit the speed of the thing myself. But when the editing does not depend on third parties, as happened during the publication of my Diário de Uma Quarentena em Risco (Diary of a Quarantine at Risk), political cartoons that I aim to do every day for a year (March 2020 to March 2021)… then I break the whole thing.

 

You are a teacher in an art school, and adding the workshops, teaching occupies a large part of your life. Have you always felt a calling for this? Or was it something that came later into your life?

I realized the passion for teaching from the very first class, I was still in my twenties and had students older than me. Today the age distance is inversely greater. More than teaching, I go for sharing and mutual learning. As I get older, I feel that I am losing notions of realities that pass by us but that we don’t live with. A generation gap that in the lack of translation we don’t understand, in the dialectics, in the customs, in its codes. Teaching 18, 20, 25 year olds helps me to better understand this present.

Composition planning for the comic strip:
“HOJE TU ÉS ASSIM. Mas já pensaste como serias HOJE se vivesses como antes do 25 de Abril de 1974?”
(Almada magazine, April 2022)

Nuno, which of your characters would you invite to dinner?

I would invite Zé Inocêncio to the Bairro Alto of the early 90s, to have dinner at Marão. And the Abília Guard to Papa-Açorda. But she had to be in uniform.

 

Is there any kind of project, service or brand that you would like to work with, artistically?

Underground Lisbon, its neighborhoods, I’m very much of the street. But if I lived comfortably, with financial stability, I would dedicate myself fully to books.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, in Santa Apolónia, Lisboa.
1st June 2022. 

ART

Attended the Degree of Communication Design at IADE; Design Degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and Painting Degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon.

Collaborator in practically all the Portuguese written press, with emphasis on Expresso and Público newspapers; and currently as resident illustrator at the online newspaper A Mensagem de Lisboa.

Diário de Uma Quarentena em Risco (2021 Edições Pim!)

Lecturer at Ar.Co: since 2001 and Lisbon School of Design since 2019

 

LIFE

Born in the Mouraria neighborhood, Lisbon, although his family is from Almada.

Illustration for tablecloths, A Brasileira do Chiado, July 2022

“The humor that makes us reflect seriously or even brings the ability to make us change a political opinion that we thought was unshakable.
It is this encounter, the fragility with the unshakable, that attracts me in drawing (and writing) humor.”

Nuno Saraiva is a name that no longer needs an introduction, but even so, we want to know: do we introduce you as a cartoonist, illustrator or artist?

I never thought much about it. I would say that to “cartoonist” I would add “political”, to “artist” add “visual” or “graphic”, I also make comics, which is where I come from. What best defines me will be the word “illustrator”, it really brings together in meaning everything I do. Even in wall paintings I am the illustrator.

 

João Paulo Cotrim said about Nuno: “you take too seriously the not being too serious”, is that something completely natural for you? With others, with work and with yourself?

Perhaps, in an intimate conversation somewhere on a long night, I would say with my eyes on the bottom of an empty glass, that I can’t stand egocentric people, that those who spend hours of their time polishing themselves in a kind of continuous masturbation irritate me. about your audience. You see a lot of that in these areas of the visual arts and there’s no patience. The small and colorful corner of Portuguese illustration will not be an exception. I don’t see myself in vanity and I feel some discomfort in the media exposure as a rule. What is completely natural for me is optimism and good mood, I’m not angry with the world and I only very rarely make this type of innuendo and always about the bottom of an empty glass. What I really take seriously is the final purpose of all my works, the humour, the meaning that I intend to offer, even if ambiguous, even if dramatic. And friends, friends I take them very seriously, they are peers of my work. João Paulo Cotrim, my dear fat friend, knew me very well when he wrote these lines.

 

This posture should make it much easier to work with people who are not exactly in your tune.

Those who know me know that relaxation will come from here, in fact too much relaxation – from the preliminaries of the idea to the critical political content, to the subliminal messages always present in my work, to the deadlines that I push to the limit of the bearable (laughs). I just don’t make it easy on one thing, derailing from the rhythm used by some of my colleagues: I refuse to present sketches. Due to my calendar always bursting at the seams, I got used to not wasting time on preparatory drawings, I never outlined alternatives or solutions B or C. Until now I’ve always done well, but if the client refuses the work I send finished – and it’s already happened – I just have to do it again or refuse. I don’t remember ever slamming the door.

REGRESSO DE D.PEDRO, A SALVAÇÃO DO BRASIL.
Inimigo Público, Série II.
Jornal Expresso, June 2022.

Your characters are fascinating. Well-natured, humorous, and sarcastic. Do you consider that your art meets what was done, for example, by Gil Vicente? Ridendo Castigat Mores, the Latin saying for “correcting manners through laugh”.

As opposed to the easy joke designed to exercise the muscles in your face, to laugh until you lose your breath, I appreciate much more that kind of humor that disarms us, strips our souls and throws us to the ground with a punch in the stomach. And then it lifts us up, but we still look for a line or point of reference to balance us, such is the disorientation caused by the shock. More: that hours later we are still thinking about it. Thinking. The humor that makes us reflect seriously or even brings the ability to make us change a political opinion that we thought was unshakable. It is this encounter, the fragility with the unshakable, that attracts me in drawing (and writing) humor.

“Canção de Lisboa”, trophy for the Especialidade category, Marchas de Lisboa, 2018.

Is there any social-political situation that you especially like to caricature?

In front of a sick Cavaco or a disconcerting Sócrates, I elect the People of this country. The people in their inertia, who don’t manifest themselves, who throw the state of things behind the State’s back. Raphael Bordalo Pinheiro spent his life satirizing the rotten elements of the agony of the constitutional monarchy, kings D. Luís and D. Carlos, the Church, the military, the loan sharks, the politicians, especially the ministers, and above all Fontes Pereira de Melo. Does anyone today remember to associate Bordalo with these figures that made him draw so much ink? No. Bordalo will always remain intimately connected to his anti-hero Zé Povinho, an always unpleasant representation of his contemporary Portuguese people, bowed down, submissive, and little inclined to revolt, or at best to revolt in a small, quiet way, expressed in a fist (this gesture in some cultures, including the Portuguese culture, has the same meaning has a middle finger).

 

Have you ever turned down jobs that went against your social beliefs and ethical values?

Yes, but respecting those same ethical values, I don’t want to reveal here who or which ones. Because they were people or companies who came to me but for some reason did not understand that I was not in the same line of thought, or who simply thought that a designer should be impartial, apolitical and accept whatever is asked of him. This kind of acephalous treatment still happens regularly with other colleagues of mine – namely in advertising agencies.

Santo António e o Mundo, trophy for the Especialidade category, Marchas de Lisboa, 2019.

In 2018, in an interview you gave to Diário de Notícias newspaper (23 September 2018) you mentioned intolerance, about being accused of discrimination when it comes to caricatures. Besides being asked to reduce the cleavage on your characters, have you ever made racial or gendered requests? All of this, has it ever caused you to limit your creativity due to society’s standards?

The political correctness card is alienating today’s society. We witness episodes that end up being counterproductive, like making black people Caucasian or attacking white people for daring to have dreadlocks – aren’t these reactions proto-racist? In my work, which I like to think of as evolving as opposed to regressing, before thinking of the objective (the reader), I think of the people who ask me for this work. Faced with the danger of a possible timely reaction that could lead to a lawsuit and threaten jobs, I think ahead and limit the speed of the thing myself. But when the editing does not depend on third parties, as happened during the publication of my Diário de Uma Quarentena em Risco (Diary of a Quarantine at Risk), political cartoons that I aim to do every day for a year (March 2020 to March 2021)… then I break the whole thing.

 

You are a teacher in an art school, and adding the workshops, teaching occupies a large part of your life. Have you always felt a calling for this? Or was it something that came later into your life?

I realized the passion for teaching from the very first class, I was still in my twenties and had students older than me. Today the age distance is inversely greater. More than teaching, I go for sharing and mutual learning. As I get older, I feel that I am losing notions of realities that pass by us but that we don’t live with. A generation gap that in the lack of translation we don’t understand, in the dialectics, in the customs, in its codes. Teaching 18, 20, 25 year olds helps me to better understand this present.

Composition planning for the comic strip:
“HOJE TU ÉS ASSIM. Mas já pensaste como serias HOJE se vivesses como antes do 25 de Abril de 1974?”
(Almada magazine, April 2022)

Nuno, which of your characters would you invite to dinner?

I would invite Zé Inocêncio to the Bairro Alto of the early 90s, to have dinner at Marão. And the Abília Guard to Papa-Açorda. But she had to be in uniform.

 

Is there any kind of project, service or brand that you would like to work with, artistically?

Underground Lisbon, its neighborhoods, I’m very much of the street. But if I lived comfortably, with financial stability, I would dedicate myself fully to books.

ART

Attended the Degree of Communication Design at IADE; Design Degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and Painting Degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon.

Collaborator in practically all the Portuguese written press, with emphasis on the weekly newspapers Independente (the epic boards of Filosofia de Ponta), Expresso, Sol, Record, Público newspaper and TimeOut Lisboa.

Diário de Uma Quarentena em Risco (2021 Edições Pim!)

Lecturer at Ar.Co: since 2001 and Lisbon School of Design since 2019

 

LIFE

Born in the Mouraria neighborhood, Lisbon, although his family is from Almada.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, in Santa Apolónia, Lisboa.
1st June 2022. 

Paulo Arraiano

Paulo Arraiano

by | Apr 18, 2022 | Art & Life, Contemporary Art

“The relationship with natural space, physically, conceptually, literarily or even holistically is something that comes from numerous places, including through an influence of my grandmother, who was Argentinian and extremely connected to these issues, that brought me a huge relationship with the land, myth and other places of speech, other than the ones I found here. “

BIOPHILIA – 2020, Installation View at Mosteiro de Tibaes.
Curated by Inês Valle.

Paulo, your artistic universe conveys two, somehow, paradoxical emotions: calm and restlessness – maintaining a balance. Are you aware of the impact of this dichotomy in the expression of your work?

According to François Matarasso – Art comes from a place of restlessness – The restlessness is and will always be part of the creation process, it works for me as a research engine and research booster. Contemporary artistic production is based on questioning, the creation of questions, and in my case, I like to use the term visual seismography, where the author measures waves concerning new natural, social and cultural paradigms in contemporary discourse. But yes, a constant search for the place of tranquility and being is natural to me, the importance of recognizing certain personal paths that, in my case, led me to study and investigate, for several years, matters such as Chinese medicine, shiatsu, sound healing, among others, and my deep relationship with the sea gives this structure to my work and research. This same relationship with the sea, that is very present in my work, has this same issue, being the sea a hyper emotional object (Timothy Morton) that automatically relates to the same dichotomy between calmness / restlessness. Which, in a way, are inherent elements of all human and natural existence.

 

In 2011 you worked as an art director and designer, today as an artist. Is your artistic process based on an organic change that meets your personal evolution or on a need to evolve in your art?

Once again, enters the process of a restlessness related to the idea of creation. My academic background is related to Literature, Philosophy, Psychology and Communication; however, the universe of image and sound has always been present, both at a family and personal level. My father was an architect and my mother a writer and journalist, both music and book collectors. All this universe deeply influenced me, and I have always been connected to numerous musical projects. Design and art direction came naturally as an extension of the academic path in the universe of communication, predominantly in areas such as music, fashion and editorial, but the creation process was always present and accompanied my professional path at the time. Art direction and design, in a way, generate a process that more and more I felt was inadequate to my essence, because the conditioning side in the creative process or the very mercantile objective of it disturbed me deeply. Once my artistic path took a larger place, it easily overlapped, taking on the essential role of my journey. Initially, I had a need to move away from all the techniques and technological tools I used in my practice and production, and painting entered relating directly to plasticity and matter, but with time I clearly came to realize that this was not enough for the themes I approached or the kind of questions themes and research that my work addresses and requires, and I ended up making peace with these production mechanisms, which I now consider essential to my practice, and although my work, even in video or image, has characteristics of the medium itself, it always ends up starting from a clearly pictorial principle and place.

 

It is noticeable in your work an interest in disciplines such as anthropology, biology, oceanography, artificial intelligence, bio and nano technology, history, mythology. Do you have collaborations with professionals in these more scientific areas?
And artistic collaborations, do they represent a significant part of your process?

The relationship between natural and non-natural space has always been something that interested and disturbed me. I grew up near the sea and had a huge presence and influence from it while growing up. The relationship with natural space, physically, conceptually, literarily or even holistically is something that comes from numerous places, including through an influence of my grandmother, who was Argentinian and extremely connected to these issues, that brought me a huge relationship with the land, myth and other places of speech, other than the ones I found here. These made me interested in research, concerning the physical body and the natural body, themes such as matter-non-matter, biosphere, extinction, transhumanism, climate change, natural and human diaspora, Pan-oceanism, and Anthropocene. Starting from a principle like acupuncture that when we place a metal, a foreign agent in a living body, we create an inflammatory process, causing the cells to move towards that point in a healing method. The creation of a work, exhibition or project works like a geographical acupuncture process where this process of questioning through the work produces this same inflammation, drawing the cells into a process of transformation.
In my production process collaboration with various areas such as academic, scientific research is inevitable, collaborating with biologists, scientists, scholars and thinkers, or people related to certain types of work in different types of medicine, shamanism, etc. The dialogue between science, magic, technologies, and other elements are essential to my research and production. This whole process is one of enormous share without which my work could never exist. I play countless times with the idea of “plastic autistic”, from which I intend to escape in my research process and even production. I soon realized that to work with the themes I relate to I wouldn’t have to be in the studio representing them, but rather in deep dialogue and collaboration with them, and this can only be done in the field. The camera, microphone or other elements of dialogue with the natural environment end up working as brushes, without leaving a mark on the ground, and thus being able to create more by working together with them.

BIOPHILIA – 2020, Installation View at Mosteiro de Tibaes.
Curated by Inês Valle.

The location of the Re_Act Contemporary Art Laboratory in the Azores archipelago, co-founded with Paulo Ávila Sousa, is on purpose?

No doubt about it. The Azores work for me as an extremely biophilic process and an enormous laboratory for research and work as well as a place for sharing and dialogue on these issues I mentioned above.
The fact that in a “rock” in the middle of the Atlantic, curators, thinkers or academics gather every year to work intensely with artists, both from different continents, in this archipelago is not a coincidence. The strength of the place, its geographical component, the volcanic presence and the island element makes the whole process extremely immersive and intense and, in a way, provides an extremely deep connection in the object of study. An artistic laboratory is developed there based on Terceira Island, which focuses on establishing a philosophical thought not only about myth and history, geopolitics and colonialism, but also about environmental justice, climate change, extinction and ecology. This residency addresses the question of the Anthropocene and the geographical divisions imposed on a Hyper object like the ocean. Between performance, writing, technology and environment, artists here are invited to create a thought about the indivisible relationships between natural and human diaspora and invited to think about the ocean from a holistic perspective of cultural, visual, textual and material interrelationships, filtered through contemporary art practices. How, from a diversity of materials and references, and the interweaving of artistic expression with the multiplicity of political, aesthetic, and philosophical discourses on art and nature, identity and space.
Artists such as Paul Rosero Contreras, Regina de Miguel, Jakob Kudsk Steesen, Adrien Missika, Pedro Barateiro, Richard Healy, Ingela Ihrman, Diogo Evangelista, Mit Borrás, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Daniel Van Straalen, Gabriela Maciel, João Paulo Serafim, Antonio Bokel, among others, and curators such as Borbála Soos, Angels Miralda, Irene Campolmi, Ultrastudio, and Scandale Project, among others, have already visited the site. The location and the specificity of the archipelago are essential to the whole creative and human process of everyone who has been there. It is, without a doubt, a privilege to be able to share the experience of being with other peers and to be able to think in a place like this archipelago that allows enough distance from the urban spectrum and the common urban place characteristic to cultural development and presentation and in a way to drop some exoskeleton intrinsic to it in this place that allows to look at the work in a more holistic and human way and create a closer dialogue with the surrounding.

INHALE, EXHALE (self breathing kit)
2020, Full HD Video on Led Wall 3m57s, 200x100cm
Installation view at Travessa da Ermida, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

And regarding WATA Publishing can you share how it all came up?

In a very specific context, in which we globally found ourselves, due to the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the impossibility for artists to develop their research through artist residencies, Re_act Contemporary had the impossibility to receive artists and the impossibility to exhibit.
WATA emerges in dialogue between my editorial and graphic background, as well as my research as an artist on the oceans and issues related to natural and human diaspora and climate change with Camila Maissune, graduated in visual anthropology, independent curator, researcher and curatorial assistant at Maat, she is someone extremely connected to the editorial component and who had already developed her research and PhD on the Indian Ocean.
The word WATA comes from – Wata Mommy – better known as Yemọja in Yoruba. This assumes itself as a publishing project that brings together artists, curators, and thinkers between contemporary art, anthropology, and science through a visual laboratory that raises critical questions about current movements in contemporary societies that aims to work closely with thinkers, theorists, and artists from the European continent, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, focusing on issues related to ecology, ocean thinking, environmental justice, post-colonialism, diaspora, and ethnography.
The publication itself appears as the residency space, a laboratory of thought and dialogue between artists and thinkers, in essence, an exhibition space in book format.

Currently we are working on a publication project entitled – From the Indian Ocean – This publication will be co-edited by both of us and with the advice of the invited scholars: Daniela Zyman (Austria), artistic director of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), Nada Raza (Dubai), artistic director of Ishara Foundation, Stephen Muecke (Australia) from Flinders University, South Australia, and Pedro Pombo (India) from the University of Goa. From the Indian Ocean has on board artists such as Max Pam (Australia), Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea), Raqs Media Collective (India), Ampannee Satoh (Thailand), Muhanned Cader (Sri Lanka), Lungiswa Gqunta & Thulile Gamedze (South Africa), Yasmin Jahan Nupur (Bangladesh), Donna Kukama (South Africa), Himali Singh Soin (India), Fazal Rizvi (Pakistan), Shilpa Gupta (India), Hassan Meer (Oman), Debbie Symons (Australia), Syowia Kyambi (Kenya), MAHI-Maritime Archaeology And Heritage and Veera Rustomji (Pakistan), among others, as well as thinkers and writers such as Nada Raza (Pakistan/UK), Stephen Muecke (Australia), Sama Issa (Oman), Sneha Ragavan ( India), Meg Samuelson (Australia), Jyoti Dhar (Sri Lanka), Thanom Chapakdee (Thailand).

Created as a residency and publication, From the Indian Ocean aims to fill a gap in contemporary art across the Indian Ocean in the well-researched theme of cultural exchange in oceans such as the Pacific or the Atlantic. We aim to deepen the discourse and understanding of how the ocean functions as a center of aesthetic and conceptual transnationalism and experimentation, closely linked to oceanic thinking and the current ecological and environmental crisis. This project thus brings together theoretical and visual essays by artists, curators, scholars and thinkers who critically engage with the Indian Ocean as a series of interconnected places; as a natural and cultural site that expands our imagination and contributes to the emergence of a new perspective on the correlations between art, ecology and identity.

INHALE, EXHALE (self breathing kit)
2020, Full HD Video on Led Wall 3m57s, 200x100cm
Installation view at Travessa da Ermida, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

Visual and Digital Arts – Cascais School of Arts & Design.
You are the course director, as well as one of those who designed the course.
What are the particularities of the students that reinforce and justify in you this mentoring role?

Designing a course related to new media in contemporary art was undoubtedly something extremely stimulating. We tried to develop an organic course that unites a strong theoretical and research component with fieldwork, production and exhibition methodologies. Numerous curators and artists are invited to collaborate, creating an organic structure of work for new thinking about art production in a post-internet age. It is extremely stimulating all the interaction with the group creating a core of thinking and joint discussion in a very horizontal format between students and faculty, and I receive a lot in return, it is a super instigating exchange because we end up creating an osmosis of academic thinking, research and artistic practices together.

Is there a medium that you haven’t worked with yet that you really want to try?

Particularly I don’t think I have been experimenting with numerous mediums throughout the process of research and creation because I can’t focus on just one specific medium. I never intended to have technical virtuosity in a specific medium, but to use the various possible tools to create a dialogue between the themes that concern me or about which I like to research and the receiver. Perhaps working on another scale at the image level, closer to the cinema that requires another type of investment and production could be an interesting challenge and one that makes some sense for the body of work.

 

Which medium do you like to work with the most?

My work always starts from an essentially pictorial place, initially I did it through painting, however I realized that when approaching themes related to certain ecosystems and natural scenarios it wouldn’t make much sense to be closed in a studio in the process of representation, but rather to be in the field and mostly in dialogue with these places to work with and not on them, giving them their place of speech. Thus, the camera ended up replacing brushes, and image and video ended up being a media with which I feel quite comfortable. It was decisive after a long period connected to painting to research and work on the NASA archive and work with cameras and satellites and images that put me in a place of questioning that really representation was not enough. On the other hand, I take enormous pleasure in working with organic matter, with soil, plants, and I discovered an enormous fascination for glass production, the whole process is super intense, magmatic, immediate and intuitive which are components that attract me greatly.

 

Is there a space or setting (dream place) where you would like to hold an exhibition?

No doubt there are several and they are the ones that many know as temples of reference, however more than that I feel like working more immensely in other continents than Europe, with other places of speech than a westernized vision regarding contemporary art, its production, canons and rules dictated by a certain market and point of view.

Olokun
2021, Installation view at Uma Lulik_, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

How to describe a typical Paulo Arraiano day? (Are there any typical days?)

Definitely not. Although after the pandemic I stayed longer in the same place for obvious reasons I ended up alternating between studio work and research and travel, field work and exhibition. I’m not one to stay at home or locked up in a studio for too long, I need input a lot and enjoy working in teams and creating dialogue. The travel component is essential to me as a human being and to my whole body of work and research, so it makes the idea of the -typical day- a little absent.

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, in Juzo Village, Cascais. 
9th March 2022. (except the artwork)

ART

Paulo Arraiano is represented by the galleries Uma Lulik_ [Lisbon] and Dimora Artica / Candy Shake Gallery [Milan].
He is also co-founder of Re_act Contemporary Art Laboratory and Residency Program [Azores]; WATA Publishing and No.Stereo, (artist-run platform). His practice relates to an idea of visual seismography, measuring waves concerning new natural, social and cultural paradigms, his research, between matter-non-matter, involves body, landscape and technology, raising questions about climate change, biosphere, extinction, transhumanism and Anthropocene.

www.pauloarraiano.com

LIFE

Paulo Arraiano is a Portuguese artist born in Cascais in 1977, where he lives and works to today. 

Paulo Arraiano at his atelier, in Juzo Village, Cascais.

“The relationship with natural space, physically, conceptually, literarily or even holistically is something that comes from numerous places, including through an influence of my grandmother, who was Argentinian and extremely connected to these issues, that brought me a huge relationship with the land, myth and other places of speech, other than the ones I found here. “

Photographies by Inês Ventura, at the artist’s atelier, in Juzo Village, Cascais. 
9th March 2022. (except the artwork)

ART

Paulo Arraiano is represented by the galleries Uma Lulik_ [Lisbon] and Dimora Artica / Candy Shake Gallery [Milan].
He is also co-founder of Re_act Contemporary Art Laboratory and Residency Program [Azores]; WATA Publishing and No.Stereo, (artist-run platform). His practice relates to an idea of visual seismography, measuring waves concerning new natural, social and cultural paradigms, his research, between matter-non-matter, involves body, landscape and technology, raising questions about climate change, biosphere, extinction, transhumanism and Anthropocene.

www.pauloarraiano.com

LIFE

Paulo Arraiano is a Portuguese artist born in Cascais in 1977, where he lives and works to today. 

BIOPHILIA – 2020, Installation View at Mosteiro de Tibaes. Curated by Inês Valle.

Paulo, your artistic universe conveys two, somehow, paradoxical emotions: calm and restlessness – maintaining a balance. Are you aware of the impact of this dichotomy in the expression of your work?

According to François Matarasso – Art comes from a place of restlessness – The restlessness is and will always be part of the creation process, it works for me as a research engine and research booster. Contemporary artistic production is based on questioning, the creation of questions, and in my case, I like to use the term visual seismography, where the author measures waves concerning new natural, social and cultural paradigms in contemporary discourse. But yes, a constant search for the place of tranquility and being is natural to me, the importance of recognizing certain personal paths that, in my case, led me to study and investigate, for several years, matters such as Chinese medicine, shiatsu, sound healing, among others, and my deep relationship with the sea gives this structure to my work and research. This same relationship with the sea, that is very present in my work, has this same issue, being the sea a hyper emotional object (Timothy Morton) that automatically relates to the same dichotomy between calmness / restlessness. Which, in a way, are inherent elements of all human and natural existence.

 

In 2011 you worked as an art director and designer, today as an artist. Is your artistic process based on an organic change that meets your personal evolution or on a need to evolve in your art?

Once again, enters the process of a restlessness related to the idea of creation. My academic background is related to Literature, Philosophy, Psychology and Communication; however, the universe of image and sound has always been present, both at a family and personal level. My father was an architect and my mother a writer and journalist, both music and book collectors. All this universe deeply influenced me, and I have always been connected to numerous musical projects. Design and art direction came naturally as an extension of the academic path in the universe of communication, predominantly in areas such as music, fashion and editorial, but the creation process was always present and accompanied my professional path at the time. Art direction and design, in a way, generate a process that more and more I felt was inadequate to my essence, because the conditioning side in the creative process or the very mercantile objective of it disturbed me deeply. Once my artistic path took a larger place, it easily overlapped, taking on the essential role of my journey. Initially, I had a need to move away from all the techniques and technological tools I used in my practice and production, and painting entered relating directly to plasticity and matter, but with time I clearly came to realize that this was not enough for the themes I approached or the kind of questions themes and research that my work addresses and requires, and I ended up making peace with these production mechanisms, which I now consider essential to my practice, and although my work, even in video or image, has characteristics of the medium itself, it always ends up starting from a clearly pictorial principle and place.

 

It is noticeable in your work an interest in disciplines such as anthropology, biology, oceanography, artificial intelligence, bio and nano technology, history, mythology. Do you have collaborations with professionals in these more scientific areas?
And artistic collaborations, do they represent a significant part of your process?

The relationship between natural and non-natural space has always been something that interested and disturbed me. I grew up near the sea and had a huge presence and influence from it while growing up. The relationship with natural space, physically, conceptually, literarily or even holistically is something that comes from numerous places, including through an influence of my grandmother, who was Argentinian and extremely connected to these issues, that brought me a huge relationship with the land, myth and other places of speech, other than the ones I found here. These made me interested in research, concerning the physical body and the natural body, themes such as matter-non-matter, biosphere, extinction, transhumanism, climate change, natural and human diaspora, Pan-oceanism, and Anthropocene. Starting from a principle like acupuncture that when we place a metal, a foreign agent in a living body, we create an inflammatory process, causing the cells to move towards that point in a healing method. The creation of a work, exhibition or project works like a geographical acupuncture process where this process of questioning through the work produces this same inflammation, drawing the cells into a process of transformation.
In my production process collaboration with various areas such as academic, scientific research is inevitable, collaborating with biologists, scientists, scholars and thinkers, or people related to certain types of work in different types of medicine, shamanism, etc. The dialogue between science, magic, technologies, and other elements are essential to my research and production. This whole process is one of enormous share without which my work could never exist. I play countless times with the idea of “plastic autistic”, from which I intend to escape in my research process and even production. I soon realized that to work with the themes I relate to I wouldn’t have to be in the studio representing them, but rather in deep dialogue and collaboration with them, and this can only be done in the field. The camera, microphone or other elements of dialogue with the natural environment end up working as brushes, without leaving a mark on the ground, and thus being able to create more by working together with them.

BIOPHILIA – 2020, Installation View at Mosteiro de Tibaes. Curated by Inês Valle.

The location of the Re_Act Contemporary Art Laboratory in the Azores archipelago, co-founded with Paulo Ávila Sousa, is on purpose?

No doubt about it. The Azores work for me as an extremely biophilic process and an enormous laboratory for research and work as well as a place for sharing and dialogue on these issues I mentioned above.
The fact that in a “rock” in the middle of the Atlantic, curators, thinkers or academics gather every year to work intensely with artists, both from different continents, in this archipelago is not a coincidence. The strength of the place, its geographical component, the volcanic presence and the island element makes the whole process extremely immersive and intense and, in a way, provides an extremely deep connection in the object of study. An artistic laboratory is developed there based on Terceira Island, which focuses on establishing a philosophical thought not only about myth and history, geopolitics and colonialism, but also about environmental justice, climate change, extinction and ecology. This residency addresses the question of the Anthropocene and the geographical divisions imposed on a Hyper object like the ocean. Between performance, writing, technology and environment, artists here are invited to create a thought about the indivisible relationships between natural and human diaspora and invited to think about the ocean from a holistic perspective of cultural, visual, textual and material interrelationships, filtered through contemporary art practices. How, from a diversity of materials and references, and the interweaving of artistic expression with the multiplicity of political, aesthetic, and philosophical discourses on art and nature, identity and space.
Artists such as Paul Rosero Contreras, Regina de Miguel, Jakob Kudsk Steesen, Adrien Missika, Pedro Barateiro, Richard Healy, Ingela Ihrman, Diogo Evangelista, Mit Borrás, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Daniel Van Straalen, Gabriela Maciel, João Paulo Serafim, Antonio Bokel, among others, and curators such as Borbála Soos, Angels Miralda, Irene Campolmi, Ultrastudio, and Scandale Project, among others, have already visited the site. The location and the specificity of the archipelago are essential to the whole creative and human process of everyone who has been there. It is, without a doubt, a privilege to be able to share the experience of being with other peers and to be able to think in a place like this archipelago that allows enough distance from the urban spectrum and the common urban place characteristic to cultural development and presentation and in a way to drop some exoskeleton intrinsic to it in this place that allows to look at the work in a more holistic and human way and create a closer dialogue with the surrounding.

INHALE, EXHALE (self breathing kit)
2020, Full HD Video on Led Wall 3m57s, 200x100cm
Installation view at Travessa da Ermida, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

And regarding WATA Publishing can you share how it all came up?

In a very specific context, in which we globally found ourselves, due to the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the impossibility for artists to develop their research through artist residencies, Re_act Contemporary had the impossibility to receive artists and the impossibility to exhibit.
WATA emerges in dialogue between my editorial and graphic background, as well as my research as an artist on the oceans and issues related to natural and human diaspora and climate change with Camila Maissune, graduated in visual anthropology, independent curator, researcher and curatorial assistant at Maat, she is someone extremely connected to the editorial component and who had already developed her research and PhD on the Indian Ocean.
The word WATA comes from – Wata Mommy – better known as Yemọja in Yoruba. This assumes itself as a publishing project that brings together artists, curators, and thinkers between contemporary art, anthropology, and science through a visual laboratory that raises critical questions about current movements in contemporary societies that aims to work closely with thinkers, theorists, and artists from the European continent, Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America, focusing on issues related to ecology, ocean thinking, environmental justice, post-colonialism, diaspora, and ethnography.
The publication itself appears as the residency space, a laboratory of thought and dialogue between artists and thinkers, in essence, an exhibition space in book format.

Currently we are working on a publication project entitled – From the Indian Ocean – This publication will be co-edited by both of us and with the advice of the invited scholars: Daniela Zyman (Austria), artistic director of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), Nada Raza (Dubai), artistic director of Ishara Foundation, Stephen Muecke (Australia) from Flinders University, South Australia, and Pedro Pombo (India) from the University of Goa. From the Indian Ocean has on board artists such as Max Pam (Australia), Dawit L. Petros (Eritrea), Raqs Media Collective (India), Ampannee Satoh (Thailand), Muhanned Cader (Sri Lanka), Lungiswa Gqunta & Thulile Gamedze (South Africa), Yasmin Jahan Nupur (Bangladesh), Donna Kukama (South Africa), Himali Singh Soin (India), Fazal Rizvi (Pakistan), Shilpa Gupta (India), Hassan Meer (Oman), Debbie Symons (Australia), Syowia Kyambi (Kenya), MAHI-Maritime Archaeology And Heritage and Veera Rustomji (Pakistan), among others, as well as thinkers and writers such as Nada Raza (Pakistan/UK), Stephen Muecke (Australia), Sama Issa (Oman), Sneha Ragavan ( India), Meg Samuelson (Australia), Jyoti Dhar (Sri Lanka), Thanom Chapakdee (Thailand).

Created as a residency and publication, From the Indian Ocean aims to fill a gap in contemporary art across the Indian Ocean in the well-researched theme of cultural exchange in oceans such as the Pacific or the Atlantic. We aim to deepen the discourse and understanding of how the ocean functions as a center of aesthetic and conceptual transnationalism and experimentation, closely linked to oceanic thinking and the current ecological and environmental crisis. This project thus brings together theoretical and visual essays by artists, curators, scholars and thinkers who critically engage with the Indian Ocean as a series of interconnected places; as a natural and cultural site that expands our imagination and contributes to the emergence of a new perspective on the correlations between art, ecology and identity.

INHALE, EXHALE (self breathing kit)
2020, Full HD Video on Led Wall 3m57s, 200x100cm
Installation view at Travessa da Ermida, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

Visual and Digital Arts – Cascais School of Arts & Design.
You are the course director, as well as one of those who designed the course.
What are the particularities of the students that reinforce and justify in you this mentoring role?

Designing a course related to new media in contemporary art was undoubtedly something extremely stimulating. We tried to develop an organic course that unites a strong theoretical and research component with fieldwork, production and exhibition methodologies. Numerous curators and artists are invited to collaborate, creating an organic structure of work for new thinking about art production in a post-internet age. It is extremely stimulating all the interaction with the group creating a core of thinking and joint discussion in a very horizontal format between students and faculty, and I receive a lot in return, it is a super instigating exchange because we end up creating an osmosis of academic thinking, research and artistic practices together.

Is there a medium that you haven’t worked with yet that you really want to try?

Particularly I don’t think I have been experimenting with numerous mediums throughout the process of research and creation because I can’t focus on just one specific medium. I never intended to have technical virtuosity in a specific medium, but to use the various possible tools to create a dialogue between the themes that concern me or about which I like to research and the receiver. Perhaps working on another scale at the image level, closer to the cinema that requires another type of investment and production could be an interesting challenge and one that makes some sense for the body of work.

 

Which medium do you like to work with the most?

My work always starts from an essentially pictorial place, initially I did it through painting, however I realized that when approaching themes related to certain ecosystems and natural scenarios it wouldn’t make much sense to be closed in a studio in the process of representation, but rather to be in the field and mostly in dialogue with these places to work with and not on them, giving them their place of speech. Thus, the camera ended up replacing brushes, and image and video ended up being a media with which I feel quite comfortable. It was decisive after a long period connected to painting to research and work on the NASA archive and work with cameras and satellites and images that put me in a place of questioning that really representation was not enough. On the other hand, I take enormous pleasure in working with organic matter, with soil, plants, and I discovered an enormous fascination for glass production, the whole process is super intense, magmatic, immediate and intuitive which are components that attract me greatly.

 

Is there a space or setting (dream place) where you would like to hold an exhibition?

No doubt there are several and they are the ones that many know as temples of reference, however more than that I feel like working more immensely in other continents than Europe, with other places of speech than a westernized vision regarding contemporary art, its production, canons and rules dictated by a certain market and point of view.

Olokun
2021, Installation view at Uma Lulik_, Lisbon
Curatorial Text: Borbála Soós

How to describe a typical Paulo Arraiano day? (Are there any typical days?)

Definitely not. Although after the pandemic I stayed longer in the same place for obvious reasons I ended up alternating between studio work and research and travel, field work and exhibition. I’m not one to stay at home or locked up in a studio for too long, I need input a lot and enjoy working in teams and creating dialogue. The travel component is essential to me as a human being and to my whole body of work and research, so it makes the idea of the -typical day- a little absent.

Paulo Arraiano at his atelier, in Juzo Village, Cascais.