Different Places: display at Westfries Museum

Different Places: an Artists in Context Project

Different Places.

The normal participation of arts in social work is normally connected to educational groups and workshops. Artists few times are able to introduce their practice outside a framework of a workshop since the technical skills and educational background of the artist usually make of him a tutor.
History of art practices can quickly remind us about the nature of the public monumental and decorative arts and other approaches more and more connected with the social exchanges that have been happening in the everyday places for the last decades. The strategies differ from one artist to another and the results are in most of the cases the outcome of an internal logic of work of the artist.
From past experiences I’ve done different sorts of public interventions that were involved with different ways of looking the “social work”. And I still keep asking why does exist (in the art field) the frustration of “giving in the quality” of the artwork. But isn’t this also one of the aims of the social projects (?), to encourage an artist to make this negotiation (the quality) in form of dialogue (which in this case takes the form of the artwork)?

In February 2006 I came from Porto (Portugal) to Hoorn (Netherlands) under the programme Artists in Context. I was granted a period of six months at Hotel Mariakapel (an artist run space based in the heart of Hoorn) and given all the freedom to develop projects. After a period of six months I would go back. In total it would correspond to half a year away from my hometown and daily routines. Therefore I couldn’t set myself in as if I had migrated. I am a traveller in passage between different places.
In one long bike ride around Hoorn I found (on an industrial landscaped area) a big strange beautiful building. The map signalled it as a prison. And some elements (the barbed wire, the colossal walls) indicated it clearly. The architecture of the building fascinated me. Especially since the preconceived image I had from a prison was a greyish concrete building resembling the old mental institutions from the movies of the beginning of the last century.
The will to acquaint the insides of a prison (at least the look of such place) gave birth to Different Places. Its name is related to the fact that this is a place where prisoners are waiting to be sent somewhere else or released. In a way they also are lost between locations. The starting point of the project was then the notion of the passenger/traveller.
The recreation creative space (KREA) was defined as the better place to be with the prisoners. A prisoner might opt for having a weekly session at KREA (about 45 minutes per week) usually spending the time doing all sorts of artistic work or just talking, since is not often that you are in presence of other people and because 45 minutes a week doesn’t give you much possibilities. To avoid interfering with such precious time, an introduction was made during KREA time and the participant would be allowed to carry on the project in the cell.
The volunteers received a roll of paper which has draw on it the outline of a jacket. These shapes correspond to the different parts of the coat (if folded and attached to one another). In one of the parts of this jacket there is already a drawing (I mean a paper cut drawing) that I made. The drawing I started to make allude to elements of traditional Portuguese decorative motifs and some words.
The participants continued the drawing process with pen, pencils, or cutting, even deciding if they want to write something instead or to remove the previous intervention. The only request is that the nature of “being in passage”, the nature of being a traveller, the fact that you are in between something and away from your starting point is kept.
The project finished with a set of pictures of a man wearing the jackets made outside the limits of the prison. The initial plan was that the prisoners themselves would wear their own jackets. Unfortunately the lack of time and the impossibility of any identification of the participants required the use of someone else. Then the coat was worn by someone travelling from the insides to the outsides of the prison.

Overall the importance of this project might even be interpreted as leisure. But considering that the participants were offered another possibility (which is not very common in such a scrutinized environment) makes it worth and a valuable practice. At least as something that demonstrates that you are offering when you are not obliged to do so.
Art is a practice that lays aside the normal understandings of logic and function. As far as one can tell the nature of art goes from exercise of beauty till a philosophical analysis of the world.
The increasing field of the social work had also absorbed art practice and artists participations as one of the privileged tools to access interaction. And with this it brings a question to the art field: in what sense is someone (besides of the artist) part of the creating act. This question unbalances the authority of the artist since it reveals a participation of “others” in the creating of the work. The artwork becomes a bate for the interaction and for the main purposes of the social project. Then is this social work threatening the essence of arts by threatening its results?
Questions like these might not have a clear answer. My opinion is that the tools of art (as any other technique) can be useful just as a device to achieve something radically different. And the results might not correspond to the technical expertise of the artist but something fundamental is still kept: the nature of expectation and surprise. The artist and the participants exchange between themselves the phenomenon of expectation and wait to see the results of what the other is doing. And this is what is brought to the art practice: that the collaborators are curious to know how the artist reacted and the artist concerned to see the results. It is a process of fascination that is not just between the artwork and the audience anymore but between the different participants of the making. One could even point that perhaps in this sense the artist is learned to regain his place as a spectator.

some more drawings

Abort more Christians

This is the drawing made for All My Independent Women at Eira 33.

appetizer (for suzanne)

some of the drawings that will take part of the (future) installation How to become invisible

I still get pretty much amazed with the size of this house

In one of the drifting moments throughout this maze structured building I found a special room. The room is in fact remarkable. The room centre seems like the base of an electric pole because of the solid wooden structure that holds on the sealing.
Since that moment I started making sketches for that place but keeping the nature of what one may name as illustrative drawings. I clearly decided to use this time in residency to try out the different possibilities of the drawing.
The natures of these drawings keep depicting single figures, this time inhabiting a scenario of electric poles and cables of phone poles. The environment is haunted by quietness and tranquillity. I cannot think another word that depicts this imagery as well as passages.

Documental Process: displacing and archiving

Aunt Nell Gis (previously displayed on the outside of
the square of the Gashouder building) was removed from its
original place due to powerful wind. I am sorry that it’s no
longer possible to witness its original display, but the wind
was making it impossible to keep the integrity of the work as
well as the safety of the public.

The ephemeral nature of the work is now transformed
and presented as a documental process. Th is new display of
the work gathers photographs of the original display, fl yers,
and sections of the original work that you can take with you.

Aunt Nell Gis removed from original display place

Aunt Nell Gis (previously displayed on the outside of the square of the Gashouder building) was removed from its original place due to powerful wind. It was no longer possible to witness its original display, but the wind was making impossible to keep integrity of the work as the safety of the public. Thus the work was carried on to the inside of the building.

The ephemeral nature of the work is now transformed and presented as a documentary process. This new display of the work gathers photographs of the original display, flyers, and sections of the original work that you can take with you.

Aunt Nell Gis

it didn´t went as i was expecting
somehow the aesthetical aspect of it feels strange to me
but at the same time seems so pretty...

Aunt Nell Gis - Kunstvlaai 06 (outdoor project for Hotel Mariakapel)

Kunstvlaai 06 invite




























In the last years, Portugal witnessed a long and absolute silence regarding legal answers to questions brought up by the violence based on hate crimes towards homophobic attitudes. The recent death of Gisberta (transsexual living in Porto), has become the icon for the embarrassing spectacle of silence. The spectacle of a death provoked by adolescents who were in an educational programme for social enrichment.

Aunt Nell Gis was a large-scale drawing, shaped as a paper carpet (following the style of courtesan tapestries), placed outside on the square near the Gashouder. The work is born from the need to produce a statement about the stalking, stoning, killing and hiding the body of transsexual Gisberta by 14 teenagers in Portugal.

Aunt Nell Gis is a depiction of the phenomenon of violence and the silence of the community itself. It is presented as a rug laid down on the floor, and in a way is just an aesthetical element in which the narrative is overwhelmed by its function (to be stepped). Narrative is silenced by the visual spectacle.

The image we see down is no ordinary representation. In fact it is a view from
something from above (as if it could be the ceiling of a church). Images from the ceiling of churches go from religious to heroic scenes or romantic depictions, and keep the premises of an evocative lesson (or a l’air du temps statement). This death is thus presented as something exotic (like gay lesbian scene is exotic to portuguese context).

There is also the question of the inversion of the image. The inversion is linked to paradox (not only thematic but also formal aspect of the work) and to illusion.

The presence of text in Aunt Nell Gis appears in form of ‘Polari’, a slang/anti-language mainly used during the thirties and seventies of the XX century (principally in London). Mostly used by homosexual men and theatre people as reaction to strict anti sodomy laws, its function was a way of protection and camouflage, or simply a form of attack, instinct or humor.When using Polari as the lingo for the narrative text, the nature of silence (whether recognizable or not) is brought up(and also the nature of the inverted - one of the names used to classify homosexuals in the past). A secret language that implies specific rules and relations of domination of a specific knowledge.





You should also take a look in the wonderful and highly professional work of Lisa Gallacher, representing Hotel Mariakapel with an inside work.

3 Large Drawings: the pics

Text handed to the public about Vivian Girls:

Vivian Girls is a series of drawings about reencountering and approaching; about overcoming absence. The title of the work sets homage to the series of drawings of Henry Darger in which he presented a group of young girls (the Vivian Girls) that fought moral corruption. He made those drawings for years without anyone ever knowing about them, until they were discovered after his death.
The display of Vivian Girls attempt to keep the nature of my work process in studio. Here you will find drawings of odd humanlike figures that overlap drawings of abandoned coats. They are displayed in a way to represent a possible encounter (and the distance, which always underlies relations between people). Relations, fragile and delicate like these drawings are.


Besides Vivian Girls there the public could also visit the work in progress for the Kunstvlaai 06. Here are some pics of Aunt Nell Gisberta in the studio.