Vento
Pedro Barateiro and Mário Varela Gomes
Inauguration July 9, 2022, 6 pm
Patent from July 9 to September 10, 2022
HANGAR – Artistic Research Center
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12 r/c
1170-112 Lisboa
https://hangar.com.pt/
Open to the public: Wednesday – Saturday | 3 pm – 7 pm
The Artistic Research Center HANGAR presents Vento (Wind), an exhibition by Pedro Barateiro and Mário Varela Gomes. Pedro Barateiro invited archaeologist and photographer Mário Varela Gomes to present a series of photographs taken in Lisbon on April 25 and 26, 1974. The photographs document the occupation of the offices of the Censorship Commission, in Rua da Misericórdia by a group of people who entered the premises and threw censorship evidence out the window. The record of this moment is the starting point for a reflection on the various crises engendered by the various totalitarian regimes since the beginning of modern and colonial capitalism, and how they still manifest themselves in the present.
The photographs by Mário Varela Gomes are a tool to examine our relationship with personal and collective imaginaries, and like the sculptures in Pedro Barateiro’s Bússola (Compass) series, serve to question disorientation and lack of political engagement in public discussions. The photographs of the occupation of the Censorship Commission’s premises serve as a reminder that we must use facts against ignorance, especially in light of the events of systematic violence, regarding the idea of “freedom of expression.” The necessity of bringing Mário Varela Gomes’ photographs into the present, should serve to question the reduction of the space for discussion within Western societies, where “freedom of expression” is advertised in media and social networks that we know are dependent on manipulated algorithms to maximize private profit. This questioning is more than necessary at a time when the apathy produced by repressive policies and entertainment is so paralyzing.
The title of the exhibition refers to the importance of the wind in the way this natural resource has been manipulated since the Portuguese colonial campaign. The scientific developments that allowed the emergence of new navigational tools, such as the mastery of water currents, led a group of beings to massacre, enslave, and contaminate others with the purpose of “civilizing” them. As the narrative tells us, this is the beginning of modern globalization and capitalism, which has been expanding since the 15th century.
Western European culture, based on the attempted domination of nature through agriculture, was planning an expansion of its dogmas. Seemingly freed from religion, the development of science, as well as human-centered myths – and their multiple fictions – helped expand the idea of private subjective capital as the ultimate form of emancipation of the human mind and body. Culture was forged and manipulated by human minds, accomplished by repressed bodies. A culture where repression was established and cherished led to an objectification of human and non-human bodies through art and science. The production of objects became an obsession and mirrors were perfected to keep up with and fulfill an ever-increasing expansion of the human gaze. The clash was inevitable: a clash of the human being himself, the non-human being, and the surrounding environment.
The exhibition will be accompanied with texts by Marta Lança and Gisela Casimiro, a public program yet to be announced, and a poster edition designed by Márcia Novais. The works were co-produced with CRAC Alsace.
In anticipation of the exhibition, on July 7 at 8:30 pm, Pedro Barateiro presents the sound piece Love Song, in a live session in the context of the residence Living Room at Cosmos, in Campolide.
Pedro Barateiro (Almada, 1979) works in a variety of media, including sculpture, film, performance, writing and drawing.
His work has focused on the deconstruction of western binary narratives. Barateiro organizes events and exhibitions at Spirit Shop, a space managed by him and attached to his studio in Rua da Madalena in Lisbon. In 2020, along with a group of artists, he started the AAVP (Visual Artists Association in Portugal). He held solo exhibitions at CRAC Alsace (2022), Kohta (2022), Rialto6 (2021), REDCAT (2016), Museu Coleção Berardo (2015), Kunsthalle Basel (2010), Kunsthalle Lissabon (2010), Lumiar Cité (2010), Museu de Serralves (2009), among many others. He has participated in group exhibitions such as the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), 20th SESC – Videobrasil (2017), 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), 16th Sydney Biennial (2008) and 5th Berlin Biennial (2008). Barateiro edited the books Temporary Collaborations and ACTIVITY (JRP|Ringier) with artist Ricardo Valentim. He edited the monograph How to Make a Mask, (Kunsthalle Lissabon/ Sternberg Press), The Artist as Spectator and É só uma ferida (It’s only a wound) (Documenta/ Mousse Publishing).
Mário Varela Gomes (Lisbon, 1949) is an archaeologist and professor. He graduated in Architecture at the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 1976 and got his PhD in Archaeology at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, NOVA University of Lisbon, in 2010. He is a lecturer at the History Department of the FCSH of UNL, a member of the Academy of History, the National Academy of Fine Arts and the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists. He was a professor on the master’s degree in Ecological Architecture & Heritage Studies in Biospheric Design, at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture (1995) and on the postgraduate course in Archaeology and Heritage at the FCSH, UNL. Author of projects in the areas of Planning, Architecture and Musealization, the Silves Museum (in collaboration. with M. L. Janeiro) received the Prize for the Defense of Cultural Heritage (SEC 1992). In 2003, he received the prize for Archaeology of the Portuguese Academy of History, a year in which he was also distinguished with the silver medal of merit by the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, for the musealization works carried out there.
