Ephemeral Landscapes [exhibition and symposium]
A Delicate Zone of Commitment [exhibition]
Opening: 10th December, 06:00 pm
Date: 10th December, 2015 – 7th February, 2016
Venue: Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon
Dialogues with Ruy Duarte de Carvalho [symposium]
Date: 10th and 11th December, 2015
Venue: Galeria Quadrum, Lisbon
Five years after the death of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, one of the greatest Portuguese language writers, the Program EPHEMERAL LANDSCAPES (title of one of his unfinished projects) consists of an exhibition and a symposium in Lisbon.
The symposium DIALOGUES WITH RUY DUARTE DE CARVALHO aims to revisit the diversity of his work, which has always explored both the particularity of the places he has dwelt and the continuous transhumance that characterized his life trajectory and thought. Less an homage than a starting point for a joint reflection on his eminently critical thinking, the meeting also intends to provide a pretext for the exploration of his body of work that challenged boundaries between places, genres and knowledge. It brings together researchers and personalities from Brazil, Angola and Portugal who have been investigating the work of Ruy Duarte de Carvalho and are concerned with related topics (see program).
The exhibition A DELICATE ZONE OF COMMITMENT follows the anthropologist, filmmaker and writer’s path, as well as other dimensions that emerge from the diversity of his materials and creative process. From the legacy left by the author, we embark on a labyrinth of confluences in which photographs, videos, texts, sketches, manuscripts, objects, drawings, watercolors and plans map the singular logic between thinking and doing. The exhibition is designed through a long voyage: from Southern Africa to Brazil, from Angola’s post‐independence to the author’s interior exile, from the desert to the sea, from his obsessions to his hesitations, from family commitments to a demanding loneliness, from the long war to the analysis of its implications, from Carvalho’s detailed field diaries to the game of mirrors between observer and observed.
We have followed the trails of his methodical and eye opener research and, as we unfold the legacy of his lifetime, we become perplexed with the trace of so many paths. We were enchanted with the backstage of his work as well. Through the initial, temporary and final planning, we could understand how ideas were born, grew and transformed. His work processes are shaped by the incessant search for the word, phrase, stroke or most fertile image that consolidates the widest premise of his thought in his texts, books, films and drawings.
We were also interested in the effects of time, incorporating the accidents of a lifetime: unfinished ideas, materials altered over the years, ruined photograms, moth-eaten sheets of paper. These details added by time remind us that unfinished, abandoned or published work can either be remade or the starting point for other purposes.
The exhibition also features contributions from artists António Ole, Délio Jasse, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Mónica de Miranda and Robert Kramer, and others. We challenged Ole, Jasse, Kia Henda and De Miranda to dialogue with Carvalho’s imagery, thus proposing other reading possibilities, which may emerge from a dialogue, including an intergenerational one, with other artistic practices.
This meeting takes a curatorial approach when, though no longer being Carvalho’s, he is here repeatedly challenged by his own work ‐ work that is recognized, therefore, as being presciently contemporary.