The Center of Modern Art Gulbenkian open its doors again to the public and with it the exhibition Tide Line (Linha de Maré) where my work Path to the Stars will be showcased. 

‘Tide Line’ starts from the Revolution of 25 April 1974 to reach the present day, reflecting on the ongoing revolutions, most importantly those related to the state of the planet. 

Organised around large installations, the exhibition corresponds, in a fluid way, to a group of ideas that framed the choice of works: transgression (in relation to the Portuguese dictatorship), manifesto (the first Portuguese artistic ecological manifesto), interiority (of the experience proposed by the artwork), mutation (technological, post-human) and evocation (of a real connection with the living world).

Of the approximately 80 works on display, many are recent acquisitions never before shown at CAM, including Monica de Miranda’s Path to the Stars, incorporated to the museum’s collection on 2022.

Film Path to the Stars follows the journey, from dawn to dusk, of an Angolan freedom fighter las she travels by boat past the banks of the Kwanza River, the largest exclusively Angolan river, which flows into the Atlantic south of Luanda. 

Along the banks of the river, the woman has several encounters with herself, as she becomes a woman of water, a woman of land, and finally, a woman of language. The bodies flow into each other through the water; metabolically, through the involvement with all living and inanimate elements of the water cycle; metaphorically, through the embodiment of states of mind and memories; or even symbolically, through the cultural construction which weaves the narrative along the banks of the Kwanza River.

A metaphor of a female place that threads through various times and spaces, a serene-faced woman intently observes the nature that surrounds her, while her body slowly merges with the watery currents of the river.

©️ Still from Path to the Stars (2022) by Mónica de Miranda