The artist from Farense Glantosz, João Melo, will inaugurate his most recent projects “AUCTION” and project “8”, two exhibitions focused on racism, on January 7th, at the gallery of Faro of the Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth (IPDJ).
In the “AUCTION” project, João Melo addresses “the auction of slaves with a strong visual criticism, which inverts one of the commercialization mechanisms of the slavery era”, begins by commenting on the artist from Faro.
This is a photographic project imagined, written, photographed and designed by Glantosz, in an «artist's critique of the individualistic and ignorant thought that, in his perspective, exists in Portuguese society. An idea that there is only a “they” and never an “I”, “an idea that I can't understand the other until I'm in their shoes”.
This project aims to «touch the heart, if it exists, of the Portuguese, more specifically those who devalue slavery and sometimes forget that we were the ones to enslave» and aims to «create a “what if it were me?” in the viewers' minds, creating a “what if it were us”” and “inverting a scenario that was the norm for more than four centuries, the action of auctioning African slaves”.
On the other hand, in the “8” project, Glantosz says that “reporting and visual simplicity are characteristics present in a photographic project that was made with the participation of eight artists
Portuguese, Lisbon and Algarve Africans, in which each one answered a question that, for many, extends beyond art: what does it mean to be an African artist in Portugal?».
João Melo stresses that «being an artist is a right that goes beyond art, beyond skin color or nationality, naturalness or monetary capacity, being an artist is being able to express what one feels, without the pain of thinking».
Project “8” was imagined, written and photographed by Glantosz and is a photo-report imagined after the death of George Floyd, in 2020. The name comes from the eight minutes of the video, seen by millions, in which George Floyd was murdered by a policeman in the United States of America.
The “8” comes with the “AUCTION”, “not to solve the problem of racism, much less to try for social acceptance, because I would say that I'm not the person with the most liberal political opinion”, but to “serve what I know how to do better: expose a problem with my favorite language of communication, photography», concludes Glantosz.
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