Une Comunautée Imaginée (An Imagined Community)

SÉRGIO CARRONHA | MÓNICA DE MIRANDA | MUSA PARADISIACA | RITA SOBRAL CAMPOS

Curator: Miguel Amado

For this 33rd edition of Ateliers Internationaux, Laurence Gateau gives carte blanche to Portuguese artists, curated by Miguel Amado!

The link between art, politics and territory is usually at the heart of residencies and exhibitions that present artists in a country other than their own. This type of projectcan be seen as an instrument of nation-building, as the works produced by the artists and/or exhibited attempt to embody the identity of their country. But a country is an “imagined community,” as theorist Benedict Anderson puts it, and so any such project must take into account that national identities are inherently contingent.

The artists’ research focuses on representation, that is, on what allows one person to identify with another, establishing (or not) an intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual connection.

Event organized as part of the France-Portugal 2022 season with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – Delegation in France.

Curators: António Pinto Ribeiro, Katia Kameli, Aimé Mpane

This exhibition presents 21 artists whose family origins are in the former colonies in Africa. Born and raised in a post-colonial context, their work has become indispensable in contemporary European art, proposing reëections on their heritage, memories and identities.

The artistic productions presented in Europa Oxalá foster an original reëection on racism, the decolonization of the arts, the status of women in contemporary society, or even the deconstruction of colonial thought. Guided visits (in Portuguese and French) of the exhibitions will be available throughout March-June. Check the dates!

MARWA ARSANIOS | DELAINE LE BAS | HELEN CAMMOCK, ANDREW GILBERT | MANAF HALBOUNI | JASLEEN KAUR, MÓNICA DE MIRANDA | HAROLD OFFEH | AHMET ÖĞÜT, LERATO SHADI

Curator: Alejandro Perdomo Daniels

Using diéerent means and aesthetic strategies, the ten artists in the exhibition highlight the critical reëexivity of contemporary art. In doing so, an artistic engagement becomes clear that does not result from the needs of an existing and evolving concept of art, but rather from a critical reëection on the factors and conditions of contemporary society, which keeps becoming more and more complex. Since they act between coexisting cultural contexts not only through their artistic practice, but also through the characteristics of their biography and way of life, they take a stand on the complexity of the common reality and draw attention to the dialogical moment in the encounter of cultural and subjective diversity.

By Wole Soyinka

Dramaturgy: Zia Soares (Teatro Griot)

“I know who the Dead Ones are. They are the guests of the Human Community who are neighbours to us of the Forest. It is their Feast, the Gathering of the Tribes. Their councillors met and said, Our forefathers must be present at this Feast. They asked us for ancestors, for illustrious ancestors, and I said to FOREST HEAD, let me answer their request. And I sent two spirits of the restless dead…”

A Dance of the Forests, Wole Soyinka