Maria Lusitano by Ricardo November 30, 2015 0 News, Screenings

(un)childhood

video analysis on two projections, cor, som, 53’ 35’’

Maria Lusitano

(un)childhood is a video analysis to be presented on two screens that is 53 minutes long and that deals with the voices and the periods of childhood in a peculiar fashion. This video-analysis is the result of four and a half years of artistic work with children and adults who would come to speak to the camera about their childhoods.

One of the children who most participated in the project was my son Mateus. “It’s me who commands in this child’s play,” says Mateus assertively to the video camera at a certain moment. However, we all are the ones who command in this child’s play.

All the participants in the project collaborate with each other though conversations about memories of childhood, concepts of parenthood, desires and dreams. Other times participants play around and improvise and relive various events of everyday life, aspirations, desires, and fears.

The film also includes old images, super 8 films of my family, excerpts of important fictional films in cinema, and a video archive made independently by Mateus for his music channel on YouTube.

(un)childhood performs and constructs childhood as the result of diverse voices and invites the spectator to participate in this process of construction. The film suggests that childhood is a metaphor, not a symbol of the past, of timeliness and of innocence. Childhood is something that today exists as a process and is positioned in practice and materialized in body, through language. Childhood today exists as a process, positioned in practice and materialized in body through language. The voices of childhood are constructed by everyone. These voices originate so much from the real world of the adults and the children as they do from the world of fictional people. 

The video-analysis is, above everything, a portrait of the unwinding of time, of a relational context, and of that which constructs all of us.

Maria Lusitano participated in various international events like the Bienal de Arte Europeia: Manifesta 5 (@004) Photo Espanha (2006) Madrid, and Bienal de São Paulo (2010). She has exhibited her work in various international museums and galleries like: Modern Museet de Estocolmo (2010), LundsKonstHall (Sweden 2010) Museu da Faculdade de Belas Artes de Seul (2011), Galeria 198 in  London (2013), Museu de Arte Contemporánea de Antuérpia (2006), Museu da Elitricidade de Lisboa (2013), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (2011), Museu Berardo (2002, 2001), Fundação de Serralves (2003).

Maria Lusitano participated in various international events like the Bienal de Arte Europeia: Manifesta 5 (@004) Photo Espanha (2006) Madrid, and Bienal de São Paulo (2010). She has exhibited her work in various international museums and galleries like: Modern Museet de Estocolmo (2010), LundsKonstHall (Sweden 2010) Museu da Faculdade de Belas Artes de Seul (2011), Galeria 198 in  London (2013), Museu de Arte Contemporánea de Antuérpia (2006), Museu da Elitricidade de Lisboa (2013), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (2011), Museu Berado (2002, 2001), Fundação de Serralves (2003).