0°20'7" NORTE 6°43'5" ESTE [2020]
ESPAÇO ESPELHO D’ÁGUA [Lisbon, Portugal]
Curated by Inês Valle
Ana Velez | Joana Gomes | Paulo Pascoal
I remember, as a child, feeling an enormous peace when, in the North, I spent the summers at my grandparents' beach house, always with my feet as sand croquets running throughout the house, collecting shells and butterflies among the puddles and dunes. I remember, at the end of the day in the living room, when the sunset is coming down, a colour of fire filled with warm streaks the entire room. I particularly remember loving to hear my dear grandmother sharing the stories and adventures of my great-grandfather in São Tomé and Príncipe – "that island is a paradise on earth!" [And there was a day when she confided in me that perhaps this was the only place that she really wanted to know in all of Africa...].
The letters that were exchanged described the daily life on that island full of kind people, with a blessed natural abundance... I keep in my memory, and with a smile on my lips, the image of my great-grandfather in his full bathing suit, when, at dawn in São Tomé, he was going for a swim in that sea, where the sky is mirrored and the horizon merges into the landscape.
I have not yet visited this insŭla, but the memories that have been passed on to me have left me with a special affection for this land surrounded by the Atlantic waters. It is in this context that this curatorship of mine arises and inspires me. What better way, could be than challenge people who have been in this unique place and ask them to share their collective special experience with us? Over 80 years ago, this dawn, had made my great-grandfather feel a great caress, so how would be felt today this same island by Ana, Joana and Paulo?
Yes, this exhibition is a memory.
Paulo had decided to move from a continent to an island, and live in a place where his creativity could flow and share it with those who lived there. More than a year he lived there, and today his ‘stay’ still impacts the lives of those who live there. Ana and Joana, experienced this magical place for three months, when they did an art residency as part of the BIS 7th Biennial of São Tomé and Príncipe.
The three of them met on the island and a friendship has been forged since then. Together they shared the "Casa Verde" and travelled for miles, documenting and experiencing flavours, colours and other experiences of this archipelago.
Paulo, actor and performer, recorded it with his camera, keeping the sounds of the voices and the noisy silences of that nature. Joana, a visual artist, travelled through it in search of the places that her father Carlos had photographed twenty years before her, on coloured film during the nineties, but also searching for the flavours of the exotic fruits that her father brought her in a small basket in that same time - memories that she will never forgot. Ana, also a visual artist, went to discover the memories of Portugal on this island, which are the heritage of São Tomé and Príncipe.
On this journey, the sea was always the horizon, accompanying them on each trail and when they sat admiring the light of the sunset, a feeling of fullness and strength of colours flaunted their gaze. In Lisbon, among the hills, a golden light with shades of lilac, blue and yellow baths us. But in São Tomé, in the centre of this African paradise, we contemplate the exuberant shades of green with the terracotta colour that merges with warm blues of the horizon, in a combination of ochre, oranges and silvers.
The memories we share in this exhibition are not only ours, but also the melancholic voices of young São Tomé poets, that make us travel through these islands by the shade of their words that join ours in this art installation at Espaço Espelho D'Água in Lisbon - where the words of "calema", "calcinante", "burning", "rusty hillsides" and "tanned sand" express themselves making us feel the radiant light and the warm sand under our feet…
Yes, this is an exhibition made of memories by us all.
Creating a sensorial dialogue between our translucent memories and the luminosities that surround the landscape of this island–art gallery, hangs in the middle of the space a site-specific artwork created by Ana and Joana. A work composed by two suspended raw linen cloth paintings, with more than three meters, in which one holds the colours of the dawn and the other of the sunset, alongside a soundtrack where we hear Paulo's voice dyed with the sounds of the island echoing through the exhibition space, so you can hear and see the colours of São Tomé and Príncipe...
It's as if we wanted to go back there. We brought to Lisbon some of the poetry we found on this African island. 0°20'7" North 6°43'5"East, is shown in a island-building in front of our river Tagus, with winds that blew into the southern hemisphere through the same ocean that bathes the Place that we honour today...
Inês Valle
