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.

Vivian Girls

Vivian Girls’ is a series of drawings about reencountering and approaching; about overcoming absence. Drawings of abandoned coats and odd humanlike figures represent the nature of approaching and the distance that is always underlying relationships between people; relationships, fragile and delicate like these drawings are.

Seven isolated figures keep an odd relation between themselves. All present the same formal treatment and depict a play of these humanoid figures with some sort of noodles that can be taken as extensions of their bodies.
There is some kind of spatial organisation that can be felt by the way these figures are displayed (their pose), some seated or leaned on objects. These physical elements (besides the humanoid figures) aren’t there: they are just suggested by the poses of the figures. These similarities bond the isolated drawings of each figure.

I am truing to bring up a depiction of what may be an encounter. And from that encounter (perceived by common formal treatment and placement on space), I want to bring up in a way the nature of the approach (as the nature of a storyteller… people get closer as the story gets more interesting) but also present the distance that is always underlying the relation among people. This work is a reencounter. Not that there is something that tells us that has been a former connection among them, but meaning a reencounter in group to escape the (common) isolation.






















These drawing are followed by another set of seven drawing of abandoned jackets. Some can clearly be connected with the figures since they are lying down on the invisible objects that may be the objects where these human figures are seated or leaned on. So, these jackets are wastes, dead, opened, useless. They are symbols of what is abandoned to return to a simplest basic state of being. They are also symbols for an imprisonment of the body which is now thrown away. I also abandon them by quitting the drawing process at a certain point.
It’s all about the abandoned.

3 Large Drawings

3 Large Drawings

Sun 30 Apr - Sun 28 May 2006

Andrew McQualter
André Alves
Andrés de Santiago


An exhibition taking place in both chapel and hotel, with murals and drawings by André Alves (Porto), Andrés de Santiago (Barcelona) en Andrew McQualter (Melbourne)

Also: book presentation BOOK HOTEL MARIA (see left)

ANDREW MCQUALTER was artist in residence at het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam until april 2006 and temporary guest at Hotel Mariakapel. He made a (semi)permanent mural in one of the rooms of the Hotel, which is also accesible to the public.

[...] ‘ I basically have two lines of investigation – one collaborative, which entails thinking of situations that enable me to investigate the dynamics of a relationship through a shared activity, and through that activity, looking at systems of knowledge and interaction, but in the end it is about the process by which we are all (ideally) co-creators of cultural forms (such as architecture or government). The other includes my figurative drawings, which are intended to manifest ideas about the practice of art and to create a kind of antagonism between sites of production and sites of display.’

ANDRE ALVES (Porto) is in residence at Hotel Mariakapel via the 'artist in context' programma of Pépinières Européennes pour jeunes artistes, Feb - Aug 2006. He also participates in the Kunstvlaai in Amsterdam for Hotel Mariakapel. In ‘3 large drawings’, a reference is made to the work 'Aunt Nell Gis', a large-scale drawing in progress for Kunstvlaai 06: a gigantic paper carper (12 by 14 m.), with strongly political drawings and texts.

A second work, 'Vivian Girls', is a series of drawings about reencountering and approaching; about overcoming absence. Drawings of abandoned coats and odd humanlike figures represent the nature of approaching and the distance that is always underlying relationships between people; relationships, fragile and delicate like these drawings.

ANDRES DE SANTIAGO uit Barcelona werkt in Hotel in maart en april 2006.

'Attempts on withdrawal, repetition, conscious copying, and the uniqueness of Décor'
If brave enough, the traditional perspective of facing an empty white plane nowadays (be it crafted, analogical or digital) seems more an individual act of self denial and a once or maybe twice in a lifetime statement of aesthetic bliss – apparently committed and precautious on the surface, a half baked extravagant just yearning for personal grandeur. And as such, a situationist depiction of serial detachment and performing credibility.
For even despite inherent blankness being properly installed, clarity and judgement still coat our eyes. And, while production means to mimic idealization processes, illustrative value follows the constructed fugacity of nonchalant representations and the mainstream hierarchical poses of fake abracadabra. Just as the true virtuous never dared to christen Apollo with popcorn, failure, these lines of commissioned marginalia, or a squared dot.

B=Barney Back

Barney Back means Get Back/Off.
Getting back marks the relation to something. It marks definitely the definition of an limit space that threatens another: it is very different from Ajax that peacefully relates objects without describing the relation between them - they are close by and nothing else.
Barney Back is an specific order. Barney Back is a limit. Barney Back is physic. In Barney Back there will be eschewed the possession of power: the establishment of that movement between possession and knowledge.
I am obsessed with images of power especially the uniform of high military positions. These coats fancy a desire for homo-sociable domination and introduce them as symbols of power and structure/discipline. The understanding of this relation of desire of something that overwhelms you remark what at the same time represses and represents the boundaries of desire. Both elements share the definition together (as an aspect of their alterity and meaning).



Barney Back will also try to represent that sometimes desire is dangerous, that we shouldn’t invest desire more than we do to structures and discipline. You cannot ask for dynamism if there isn’t harmony. Barney Back attempts in this understanding of the need of structure as something inherent and undeniable for desire itself.

A=Ajax

Ajax means nearby.
This is an essay about encounter and loneliness; about communicating desire and ambiguity; about secret and access.
The purpose of this work is to create an encounter between subject. The medium is video installation. The set is just a circular platform that goes around (there is a structure that hangs the platform) with two benches. Two same sex individuals are taking those places. What they create among themselves, their relationship, is a endless spiral of mystery and secrecy. This perpetual movement marks the impossibility of an exit: the communication is built up/imprisoned by its own laws/nature.
There isn’t a word spoken in between the individuals. What raises from their situation marks a relation of presence and desire (sometimes they look each other, or show to know someone is there). The communication they establish is never coming to form, not in words, not in structure.
The visual encounter of the subject (following the visual central field of the set up) is sided by multiple sound projection (which in fact are several words in Polari - 12 - each through different speaker). This blast of words are hidden ideas; hidden devices for expression and for circumscribing meaning. The words overlay reveals something strange: words are said in Polari and so, an inherent problem for interpretation (or perhaps not...).
It become important then, to "build up" what you want to hear by choosing the speaker you want to listen to. The choice move us through what is unknown (either you don’t know the code or you can predict the following word).

ABC...Dictiopolari

The vanishing of an culture, by the overlap of another is always marked by the attempt of eliminate its legacy (in order to establish a new order), and at the same time an integration of elements that mingle with the new implemented structure, both as folkloric and pragmatic interference.
The Dictiopolari project is born from an archaeological look on the formation of specific knowledge.
There is a relation of knowledge with Polari that marks its background and specificity: i know it because i need/want o know it; i own it an it defines me. For there as an relation of master and servant in some way: you cannot live without knowledge, but knowledge itself cannot live just in itself, without you.
Polari by giving meaning to a certain desire, creates (represents in words) an certain truth about an certain reality. A seek for truth that tries to detour and overcome the distortion of appearances that exist to mask and deny access to the real. This is precisely the bias for knowledge elaboration. And in fact, also one of the reasons for the emergence of a dictionary (to avoid misinterpretations).
The Dictiopolari is based on this need to communicate and recognition of a similar language. According to lacanian point of view, the subject (when trying to bring up its existence) is obliged to request the recognition of it to someone else; to approach others makes me identify with him (and by doing so dividing my true me). The language (the basis for this relation) is real but structures itself in the place of the other, and because of that we are able to communicate. That's the reason why the place of the other is the place of desire. Because he defines the limit that gives meaning to my action/desire.
A dictionary is an structure that defines a limit of interpretation: Dictiopolari is an interpretation of that limit. What limit? Based on what? Which relation exists between realities and communication? Is there a axis/context of relation among owner's of power? Why is there the need to form a word, to define it in sound and moreover in meaning? A dictionary reveals the existence of a structure of thought that defines a closure, a limit that safeguards the interpretation and alterity. A dictionary is like censure: reveals/creates at the same time that misprisions.