portfolio

 

artists anonymous

Artists Anonymous is a community of people who share their experience, strength, and hope to resolve their common problems and help each other to continue making art in an inspired, healthy and sustained way. The only requirement for becoming a member is the wish to continue making art.

—  project duration
    2021 > ongoing

—  project location/logistic partn
    Galeria Monumental (Lisbon)
    Espaço Q QuadraSoltas (Porto)

—  communication and image partners
    Inês Gil Silva (Sounds Like a Plan Photography)
    Filipa Leite Rosa (Framers Studio)
    Marco Teixeira (Tripé)
    Gonçalo Nuno Souza (Souza Filmes)

—  support
    Cerveja Barona
    Curious Monkey (Lisbon)
    Bempostinha 22 (Lisbon)

The development of a career in the arts is one of the hardest challenges to structure and describe. Due to the characteristics of this professional field, the art worker becomes divided between two worlds and ways of thinking. On one hand, they develop work methods connected with a liberal, flexible profession with open answers, free creation, and innovation; on the other hand, they should fit their professional practice in a system with institutions, scholarships, job offers, and art markets. Thus, the art worker is simultaneously a researcher, educator, creator, businessperson, independent, and dependent employee.

Additionally, the events that occurred in 2020 and 2021 weakened even further the cultural sector. However, in parallel, associations, discussion groups, and new practices started to emerge, with the aim to answer the new-found difficulties. Artistic practice can be a lonely place. For that reason, once a month, we gather in a group for mutual support, focused in particular on the practice of visual arts.

Art workers: plastic artists (ceramics, drawing, sculpture, design, crafts, photography, video), educators, curators, or programmers, preferably located partially or fully in the city of Lisbon or Porto.

 

project-space

mais uno +1 is a project-space at Largo Residências that seeks to explore hypothesis of relationships between

  a space
+ Largo do Intendente
+ artist of the month
+ the community
+ you

—  project duration
    2021 - 2022

—  artists
    Angela Fellowes    (Nov 2021)
    Lígia Fernandes    (Jan 2022)
    Nicole Sánchez     (Feb 2022)
    mais uno +1        (Mar 2022)

The project mais uno +1 contemplates the definition and management of an exhibition space, stemming from the interpretation of the curatorial exercise's as:

1. A shared act that is generated or is executed by more than one person, a way of testing hypothesis of relationships;
2. An artistic act that establishes a way of exploring and creating collective practices;
3. An act of premeditated spontaneity that prepares and facilitates the necessary conditions to the occurrence of organic encounters and events through artistic expression.

Through this perspectice, the construction of the space’s rationale, identity, communication and operation becomes an act of common creation that functions as a territory for reunion and mediation. Thus, the exhibition space adopts the nature of project-space. In a project-space the artistic practice is process-based: comented, presented, considered, tried and co-produced, seeking collaborative and/or participatory, and interdisciplinary processes.

With emphasis on the exploration of the involved actors’ different dynamics and energies, and considering that the collective is comprised of ones (1+1+1+1+...), which is on its own one as well, the the project-space mais uno + 1 (in english, more united +1) operates in a relational and incremental way that seeks to activate its potential for social and urban restoration and local artistic revitalization one link at a time.

(project-space) = mais uno
mais uno + 1 (actor* A) = uno (united)
mais uno + 1 + 1 (actor* B) = uno (united)
mais uno + 1 + 1 + 1 (actor* C) = uno (united)

* Someone/something able to cause effect which can
be composed by one or more. Example: neighbors, artists,
residents, workers from the institution, students, etc.

— projetos

Angela Fellowes
"Our Memory"

A collection of memories from Largo do Intendente in Lisbon drawn on the Café's placemats.

Lígia Fernandes "grandma did not tell me"

Granma did not tell me about her childhood, about what it was like to be born and live in Portugal.

Granma did not tell me that she saves her first love’s picture in an album, but does not show it to anyone.

Granma did not tell me she escaped from war with the money she could hide inside her vagina.

Granma did not tell me about the day she stopped playing the piano.

Granma did not tell me anything about how grandpa went away and left her with my mom.

Granma did not tell me about the prostitution of cabaret and magazine artists.

Granma did not tell me about the black victims from the ex-Colonies’ independency.

Granma did not tell me that rich girls could not go to school.

Granma did not tell me about her trip through the african continent.

Granma did not tell me about her childhood job.

Granma did not tell me about her career as a singer and radio artist.

Granma did not tell me about grandpa’s lovers.

Granma did not tell me about great–great-grandpa, who was from São Tomé e Príncipe and could have been a slave trafficker.

Granma did not tell me about her impossible passion for a man of another social class.

Granma did not tell me about great-grandpa, who was a jazz musician, and who she only met while he was asleep.

Granma did not tell me why she sent mom to boarding school.

Granma did not tell me about the 25th of April.

Granma did not tell me about her childhood at the Tivoli theatre.

Granma did not tell me about this Lisbon, which is made of so many layers.

Granma did not tell me that I was the first woman of the family to be born in Freedom.

That I discovered, after I listened to her.


Text: Lígia Fernandes, based in true testimonies collected with the users of the N. Sra. dos Anjos day center between May and September 2020. 

Since March 2020 with the triggering of the COVID-19 pandemic, most community spaces in Lisbon closed down — between them, the Nossa Senhora dos Anjos day center. For many of their users, the day center activities were the only moments of social interaction in their quotidian. The pandemic revealed itself especially difficult for the elder generation, which found itself confined at home in situations of extreme solitude. It was in this context that I received an urgent invitation from LARGO Residências to develop an artistic initiative with the Nossa Senhora dos Anjos day center.

The project “family portraits” was part of that initiative. It was the first one I undertook after the occurrence of the pandemic. There were several weeks of collecting images and life stories from the different users. The collection consisted of visits to their houses and a conversation that ran to the rhythm of the family album’s pages being turned. Life stories with many pauses and resumptions. From this initiative, the project “grandma did not tell me” was born: a collection-in-progress from the stories and life’s images of the oldest generation of women in different parts of the world. I re-construct, through drawing, a feminine narrative of the story that remained unwritten. In January 2022, I return to the images collected at the space “mais uno +1.




                       

Nicole Sánchez
"Neighborhood Studio"

The month of February at Largo Café Estúdio and at the project-space mais uno +1 is dedicated to photography. The project "Neighborhood Studio" by Nicole Sánchez seeks to capture the essence of the Intendente community by reviving a tradition that — with the passing of time, the emergence of photomatons, compact digital cameras and smartphones — became extinct.

The neighbourhood's photography studios have represented for decades a place of celebration, reunion, rite, where people, friends and families would get together on special occasions (and not only), adorning themselves with their prettiest dress or more brilliantine in their hair than usual. At the same time, these studios also became a place of archive: in their windows were added the polished faces of the neighbourhood, the passport photographs, the family portraits, or the images of the baby that had just been born. Every face that built that neighborhood, that community, that extended family was mirrored.

By reconstructing this “neighborhood studio” in the project-space mais uno +1, Nicole seeks to comfort the nostalgia for a meeting place consumed by time. For a month, neighbors will again be able to put on their best tie, wear their brightest nail polish, and come together for a photo. A photo that they can take home, frame, and put on the living room wall, to remind them that, after all, they belong to something more united. As a showcase, Largo Café Estúdio presents the results of the "Neighborhood Studio" that was set up in December 2021.

mais uno +1
"Sundays of Creation"

In the midst of the military dictatorship in Brazil — and three years before its end in Portugal — the “Sundays of Creation” took place in 1971 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. By the initiative of Frederico Morais, and through the action and imagination of the hundreds of people who gathered, every Sunday there was an act of creation, dialogue and collective celebration. This action was assumed as a true political rupture at a time when freedom was not a possibility.

In March 2022, at Largo do Intendente, in Lisbon, we remembered the “Sundays of Creation” at Largo Café Estúdio. As a part of the LARGO Residências Cultural Cooperative, many Sundays dedicated to culture and art also happened here. Over the last 10 years, the Café has been pulsating in this square as a meeting and dialogue center in the Intendente Neighborhood.

During these latest actions by Largo Café Estúdio in Largo do Intendente, we invited its community to create with us. Each Sunday of this month was dedicated to a form of expression — words, images, lines, movements — in honor of all the people, artists and exchanges that have passed through here, and the different types of language used. Thus, we invited everybody to goodbye to the Café Estúdio, to thank it and tell it that it belongs to us, that it lives within us and it will continue to last in time. 

Simultaneously, in the adjacent mais uno +1, we accumulated the affections and expressions exchanged throughout these Sundays in a fanzine project. The fanzine became an open studio, an artistic project, a participatory process and an archival exhibition, where the words spoken, the images captured, the lines drawn and the movements performed were united and immortalized each of its pages.

 

stories lived and to be lived

Ativities for children.

—  project duration
    July 2022

—  project site
    Agrupamento de Escolas do Catujal (Unhos, Lisboa)

—  partner entities
    Parish Council of Camarate, Unhos e Apelação
    AMRT Transcultural

This project stems from a partnership with the Parish Council of Camarate, Unhos and Apelação and AMRT Transcultural. This partnership seeks to create and explore continuous relationships between the Quinta da Fonte neighbourhood and a community of artists working with social, situated and participatory art. Quinta da Fonte: warm neighbourhood embroidered in yellow and bathed in yellow. Warm neighbourhood with much life surely, but sometimes unseen. This is how they painted Quinta da Fonte and this is how we saw it, when we visited. And so they asked, and we consented, to nurture that wamth.

The partner entities, throughout a long work with the territory, identified in Quinta da Fonte a weak social cohesion and connection between the different local associations, manifesting a need to rethink the current relocation, community and identity models. It was based on this analysis of the territory, and on the will to create opportunities for artists to develop work with the local community that we initiated this partnership, aiming, through the organisation of artistic creation projects, to develop and share tools for the community to continue developing continuously the work catalyzed by us. We seek to explore artistically and, hopefully, strengthen the connection between those stepping on the warm soil of Quinta da Fonte: their inhabitants, the local entities, the artists, and the territory itself.

The children activities “Stories lived and to be lived”, was the first initiative rising from this collaboration: a first contact to help us learn the real or imagined stories, the dreams and lives of the children that inhabit the warm neighbourhood of Quinta da Fonte.

The past is recent (if not present), and the memories — so alive — make us shiver just for thinking of them… They generate laughter, desires. By going and returning with no difficulties, we imagine a near and glorious future, with no fear. Unlike adults who, through stories (once lived, now told), nostalgically touch and re-live the past, children experience their stories as a process of understanding, learning and playing. By remembering and imagining, they navigate the many directions of what is possible and impossible. Everything fits within the imagination! 

This program of activities for children between the ages of 6 and 12 gathered different multidisciplinary proposals related with childhood stories: stories that shape and mark us as adults, and that are the present of the children of today. 



    

Manu Ribeiro
"Here a story was told"

A drawing and spoken narrative activity. This activity was organized in pairs. Each 2 children executed two activities: at a turn, one told a story as the other drew what they were hearing. We selected a group with older kids for this workshop, as it potentiated the sharing of feelings, psoposing the challenge to become emotionally vulnerable before their friends and peers. “Here a story was told” was an activity for leaning not only how to draw, create, imagine and communicate, but also a challenge to look inside oneself and open up to others.

Alessandra Vilela
"Watercolour painting on fabric workshop"

This workshop focused on painting with watercolours on fabric. Alessandra focused the session on teaching the watercolour technique and explaining basic notions on the colour scheme. By providing a new technical skill, Alessandra sought to stimulate the children’s creativity, and explore freedom of expression, allowing them to find their own voice.

Liz Melchor
"Let's Make a Monkey Story!"

Let's Make a Robot Monkey Story: an afternoon where the children each colored, adjusted, and added to a monkey outline that was plotted by the pen plotter (drawing robot). The goal was to make a very short stop motion animation. They each held part of the collective story. It aimed to integrate the childhood fun of cartoons, offer an interaction with technological tools, and to show them that together they each will have responsibility and autonomy to make one part of a unified story.

Ana André
"Stories and paper dolls"

In the activity “Stories and paper dolls” two stories were told, and for each story the children were taught how to make a paper doll through folding and cutting, and make a shirt for that figure. By shaping the figure, children personalised their toy: in some cases they created a replica of themselves, in others, a replica of a tutelary or heroic figure.

Carla Luís “Human Rights: what are they and should they be?”

In this activity called “Human Rights: what are they and should they be?”, we talked about Human Rights: the Rights that we have and the ones we should have. The children were invited to talk about these aspects and produce visual materials (by drawing and writing) related with the topic. The materials were then hung on the wall in an exhibition format, giving a voice to the children’s participation.

 

Grasping Time: Drawing in the Here and Now

The exhibition comprises drawings produced during the live-drawing sessions organized weekly by Lisbon Drawing Club; as a retrospective on the hands, bodies, and minds that have passed through these meetings during 2022. 

—  project duration
    25th - 27th November

—  project location/logistic partn
    Fabrica Braço de Prata (Lisbon)

—  partner entities
    Lisbon Drawing Club

—  communication and image partners
    I

Drawing, as a primary visual language, is essential for communication and expression and many times just as important as written and verbal skills. The need to understand the world through visual lenses seems more urgent than ever: images transcend the barriers of language and enhance communications in an increasingly fluid society, in a world that changes rapidly and where nothing remains the same.

Considering this rapid change to be inevitable, we proposed the theme Here And Now, which can contain multiple  meanings. First, it creates urgency. It causes the act of stopping for a moment and understanding the present before it is too late. Secondly, it represents the literal action of the Lisbon Drawing Club: People being together in a space, focusing on the present, and drawing. This togetherness allows them to experience a very unique moment of creation, reflection, and representation.


The human body has been a central preoccupation of artists since the first known forms of human expression, gaining more relevance within the Drawing field since the Renaissance. But how can the body be drawn? The drawings in this exhibition are not accomplished only in an illustrative sense, there is not just interest in portraiture or in conveying accurate details, but the tension is to give emphasis to the subject of the life within.

The artists’ inner desire is to register the human condition and to communicate it to the world, by creating a storytelling emotional effect. Through quiet contemplation, the viewers can see the body’s different sensations and forms, as well as the images evocatively suggested by these works. While they may look small in scale, they open up a wide space to rethink the actual notion of the body and the human condition.

By collecting drawings from the Here and Now, this exhibition also grasped the mutation of time. Moments are ever-evolving, time continuously transforms the (now-past) present into a new (more-current) present. Each of the selected drawings testifies to the liveliness of both the drawer and those being drawn; for life means movement, action, and transformation. Therefore, this exhibition acts as an archive of moments in time, an archive of people and connections. Here and Now might seem difficult or uncertain, but it can also be a great time to live —  unquestionably, a time worth grasping.