The group exhibition “Peregrinação. From the panels of São Vicente” opens this Saturday, September 3, at 16 pm, at the Fortaleza de Sagres, with works by Ana Celorico Machado, Christoph Rumpf, Bettina Semmer, Joana Villaverde and Pedro Leitão.
At the opening, texts by Jacinto Palma Dias will be read and there will also be a culinary performance by the cook José Pinheiro.
The objective of the collective is, according to its promoters, that the place resumes «its role of pilgrimage and that, over a period of time, a succession of plastic interventions would leave their mark there, like the layers of a history that is made. , the marks left in a place by passersby'.
The S. Vicente Panels and the Sagres Promontory area share the figure of the saint, who is the central character of the work considered an icon of Portuguese culture and gives its name to the cape that is in the vicinity, where the martyr's body will have rested. , guarded by crows. It is from these convergences that this artistic intervention comes.
«The panels of S. Vicente, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves, are an icon of Portuguese culture, a reference in the history of painting in Portugal and of History tout court», explains Tertúlia – Associação Sócio-Cultural de Aljezur, which promotes the initiative , in a press release.
«Since its discovery, at the end of the century. XIX, have been the object of attention and study by people coming from different horizons - historians obviously, but also intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, curious ... we can therefore say that they are perhaps the best known and recognized work of art in Portugal », he adds.
«The period and theme portrayed are linked to the century and the history of the Portuguese expansion. And although there is little data from the time that can tell us exactly about the panels, they represent something of what Portugal was and is”, says Tertúlia.
On the other hand, «Cape S. Vicente is a last point of the pilgrimage and the cult of the saint. Records of the cult of S. Vicente indicate the cape as the place where the boat with the mortal remains of the saint reached the coast, and were deposited until Afonso Henriques took them to Lisbon».
Therefore, the collective exhibition, in addition to intending to return to Sagres its role as a place of pilgrimage, now for artistic reasons, also intends to start «from an interaction with the monument itself, referring to the idea of discovery, of the stratification of the historical process and of its reading, in a reinterpretation that intends to make a bridge with the present time».
The exhibition, part of the program for the Disclosure and Valorization of Monuments in the Algarve (DiVaM), promoted by the Regional Directorate of Culture in conjunction with various cultural agents, is an initiative of Tertúlia – Aljezur's Socio-Cultural Association and can be seen until 24th of September.
Who are the artists?
Ana Celorico Machado
Master in Social Anthropology, having studied at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the University of Paris V on a scholarship from the French government.
She was a researcher at the Center d'Études Tsiganes in Paris, adjunct professor at the University of Algarve and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
She is co-author of articles and books about gypsies in Portugal, having subsequently worked in the fields of Museology and Landscape Anthropology.
After settling in Costa Vicentina, he co-founded and co-directed the Escola Livre do Algarve.
He is currently engaged in writing, translation and research projects linked to local history and ethnography.
She was one of the guests in the projects How Far the Sight Reaches e Fresh Wi(n)down by Susana de Medeiros.
Pedro Leitão
Born in Porto (1973), he lived in Florence, Venice, London (where the Social Intervention project at the Oasis Nature Garden stands out – with the support of the Gulbenkian Foundation) and Istanbul before settling in S.Bartolomeu do Sul, Algarve, where is a founding member of the collective The Beekeepeers.
He participated in several solo and group exhibitions with emphasis on “The Behaviour of Being” at the Cob Gallery, London (2015), “European School of Social Imagination” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA) curated by Franco Berardi, “Human Landscapes”, at the Alan Gallery, Istanbul.
Its main focus and engine is painting; with regular practice in writing, editing, social intervention, illustration, video and curation.
His academic path includes a Masters in Psychology from the University of Porto, training in Photography, Cinema, Theatre; Post-Graduate in Playwork, passing the Fine Arts degree at Goldsmith's College, London.
Bettina Semmer
Born in Düsseldorf, she has an extensive curriculum in the field of contemporary art - international exhibitions, films and artistic interventions.
His studies with Sigmar Polke and Gehard Richter, and also in the area of Cinema, in Hamburg, gave shape to his work, a work of interrogation and reaffirmation of painting as a medium (medium).
His recent activities include murals and workshops in Western Sahara refugee camps near Tindouf (Algeria), interventions in the city of Potsdam (The Good Life, 2015) and a participation in the platform “The 80s – Figurative painting in Germany”, at the renowned Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands. She also works as a curator and directs the Semmer-Berlin space.
Hyacinth Palma Dias (Castro Marim, 1945)
Degree in History Univ. Paris VIII in 1973. Publishes “O Algarve Revisitado”, Loulé/Lisbon in 1994. In 1999 he publishes “The Metaphor of Water, Earth and Light in the mythology of the archaic Algarve”.
While the first publication dealt with material civilization, the latter studied immaterial culture, and this is how immaterial culture will appear to us imbued with a Mozarabic Christianity. And, of course, S. Vicente.
Following this publication, the Álvaro de Campos Association, from Tavira, organized an event at the National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon, in which Jacinto Palma Dias spoke about the panels by S.Vicente de Nuno Gonçalves.
Recent publications: “Algarve 3D” as well as “Aesthetics and Inesthetics in the contemporary Algarve”.
It will then abandon the Algarve as a theme to devote itself to Portugal, so “Portugal Before Portugal” is already in press.
Joana Villaverde (1970)
Lives and works between Lisbon and Avis, Alentejo.
Exhibits regularly since 1998.
Some of his exhibits: Animals Nightmare – Avis, Lisbon; Je Vous Garde – White Pavilion, City Museum, Lisbon; iron and fire, Comodo Format, Madrid; Drawings – Sala do Veado, Lisbon; Identities-continued #4, Society of Fine Arts Lisbon, EDP Foundation, NYC Scope Art Fair, Black & White Gallery; You Took From Me All the Air So I Can't Breathe, New York, residing in Location One, as a Funda Scholardog Calouste Gulbenkian.
Resident artist for two months at Guest House of the Qattan Rammallh Foundation in Jericho, Palestine. Participated in Ramallah at the Benjamin Palestine conference. In all his stays in Palestine, he organized drawing workshops at the International Art Academy, Ramallah.
He also regularly collaborates in theater, where he made sets for plays: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Teatro da Cornucopia, Centro Cultural de Belém, Culturgest, Teatro Nacional Sao João and Teatro do Bairro, for which he makes most of the drawings posters and monthly programs.
She is co-author, with Mafalda Ivo Cruz, of the book “Emma” published by Cavalo de Ferro.
His work is represented at the EDP Foundation, in the Diocese of Beja and in several private collections, in the USA, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and Palestine.
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