Sights and Sounds: Portugal
Sights and Sounds: Portugal features new work by Gabriel Abrantes and Benjamin Crotty, Salomé Lamas, and a pair of videos by Bofa da Cara, selected by Miguel Amado.
Portuguese artists have been experimenting with film and video since the 1960s. However, these media – particularly video – only became popular in the Portuguese art scene in the late 1990s, primarily within a group of emerging artists who explored the nature of the moving image.
A decade later, a generation of young artists – including Gabriel Abrantes and Salomé Lamas – further developed video, as well as film. Although their output is diverse in style and subject matter, all emphasize cinematic narrative, and share an approach to the real in which fact and fiction are blurred. Their works are presented both in art galleries and film festivals, eroding typical disciplinary boundaries.
Artists in Angola, Mozambique, and other African countries that were formerly Portuguese colonies frequently show their work in Portugal. The country has, in consequence, become a hub for the wider international dissemination of their art. In Africa artists are employing film and video more and more, in parallel with media such as painting and sculpture. The videos by Bofa da Cara (a collaboration between Angolan artist Nástio Mosquito and Spanish filmmaker Pere Ortín) – often visual companions to spoken-word performances – illustrate some of the output from the region. They consider the Eurocentric representation of the other to examine the legacy of colonialism.
This selection focuses on the intersection of the social with personal identity. Lamas looks at a community in Lisbon, reconstructing the experience of its members through memory. Abrantes tells a love story between Liberdade and Betty, an immigrant Chinese girl, set in Luanda, the capital of Angola. Bofa da Cara creates an iconography drawn from archive material to map stereotypes and conflicts. Although poetic, the featured works express politics – in history and in geography.
Miguel Amado
Curator
Miguel Amado (b. Coimbra, 1973) is a curator and critic based in Barcelona and Lisbon. He was the curator of the Portuguese Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale and has worked on or organized exhibitions at such institutions as Tate St Ives, England; Rhizome at the New Museum, New York; the Abrons Arts Center, New York; apexart, New York; and the Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra. His writing appears regularly in Artforum. He holds a Master’s degree in curating contemporary art from the Royal College of Art, London.
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
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Gabriel Abrantes and Benjamin Crotty, still from Liberdade, 2011, super-16mm film transferred to HD video, sound, 17 min., 30 sec. Artwork © Mutual Respect Productions, all rights reserved
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Salomé Lamas, still from A Comunidade (The Community), 2012, HD video, sound, 23 min., 16 sec. Artwork © Salomé Lamas
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Bofa da Cara, still from My African Mind, 2010, video, sound, 6 min., 12 sec. Artwork © Bofa da Cara
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Bofa da Cara, still from My European Mind: Rebranding Europe, 2013, video, sound, 22 min. Artwork © Bofa da Cara
