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In this poetry collection, ACORN (BOLOTA) and POPPY (PAPOILA) are powerful metaphors of local life and invite us to reflect upon the challenges of FREEDOM (LIBERDADE).
The meaning that these words gain when read in situ, will depend on the audience of our community of readers. What is certain is that these doors open joy and provocation in a place that hasn’t lost the childish art of dreaming in color even 50 years after April 25th.
The collection will be installed in two key streets in the Vila — Rua do Relógio and Rua João Falcão, a place born from an artistic residency in Torrão. We will focus on reading the site as a place and using Place as a pretext for the visual communication of the Village itself. Art.
Curatorial n ote
Xana first arrived in Torrão more than a year ago accompanied by another artist, Cristina Ataíde. During this past year, the idea developed and took shape as an original urban installation in Vila do Torrão. This came step by step, from conversations to sketches, from research to technical drawings, from prototype to final pieces. The childish energy in its graphic purity with its visual impact, is a very particular example of how art becomes a public thing. And here I too play with (me too) the notion of public art. For some this idea may be already exhausted, but for others it remains an interesting concept.
It is fascinating that these flat but vibrant colors are direct and mysterious. We recognize that it is possible to reinvigorate something and have this be an oasis for the imagination. The language is a kind of pop visual culture that may seem naive, child’s play but works as an experimental signpost for us to visualize the new. Unreal? Surreal?
In these eleven pieces of abstraction, they create a gate– there is a… gate(way)! And it opens to a collection of stickers on the Alentejo walls. Do I make sense of this daydream? No more than Xana can with his challenge to read and reimagine the urban image.
Mário Câmara Caeiro
Xana was born in Lisbon in 1959. He graduated in the Fine Arts from the Escola Superior de Belas Artes de Lisboa in 1984. He is a resident of Lisbon. Since 1995, he has been developing the LAC project – Laboratory of Creative Arts in Lagos. He is the co-author of the Degree in Visual Arts project at the University of Algarve where he has been a professor since 2004. In 2017 he co-founded Associação 289 in Faro. He completed a PhD in Communication, Culture and Arts in 2019 from the University of Algarve with the project “Love, Freedom and Wisdom – Dialectic of a Visual Construction” (Amor, Liberdade e Sabedoria – Dialética de uma construção Visual).
As a visual artist, he’s exhibited scenography and visual interventions in public spaces since 1981. In 2005, Culturgest, in Lisbon, presented an anthological selection of his works, entitled “Opaque Art and Other Ghosts” (Arte Opaca e Outros Fantasmas), curated by Alexandre Pomar and Lúcia Marques. The last 10 years has showcased his creations of temporary public art installations/constructions. Xana is represented in several museums and public collections, namely Serralves Museum in Porto, Kunstlerhaus-Mousonturm in Frankfurt, and in Lisbon the MAAT – Museu de Arte Arquitetura e Tecnologia, the Fundação Luso-Americana, and the Center for Modern Art at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Support: Alcácer do Sal City Council, Torrão Parish Council, Formula P
