Troubles with Primitivism—a view from Portugal

The CIAJG / José de Guimarães International Arts Centre (Guimarães, Portugal) presents Troubles with Primitivism—a view from Portugal an exhibition-essay curated by Mariana Pinto dos Santos and Marta Mestre, and designed by Sofia Gonçalves.

The ongoing exhibition's public programme will culminate with the free-access conference Troubles with Primitivism—a view from Portugal, on September 28, bringing together invited speakers to build an ephemeral community of reflection and experience about the museum. The opening day featured the music and sound performance programme antimuseu, promoted by Revolve, with artists as Croatian Amor, Vanity Productions, Oqboqbo, among others. 

A comprehensive, richly illustrated catalogue will be published in early November 2024. The authors include Cristina Roldão + José Augusto Pereira + Pedro Varela, Egídia Souto e Philippe Charlier, Joana Cunha Leal, José Neves, Margarida Cafede Moura, Mariana Pinto dos Santos, Maria Cardeira da Silva, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Marta Mestre, Nuno Porto, Rita Chaves, Tiago Saraiva, Vera Marques Alves, Wladimir Brito, Vera Mantero.

Through meticulous research in Portuguese archives and collections, Troubles with Primitivism—A View from Portugal presents a renewed perspective on “primitivism” and the inherent contradictions of this historical and cultural process. This innovative, research-based and experimental curatorial proposal invites the entire museum to engage in a critical dialogue, amplifying a polyphony of voices from diverse sources, authors, and artists. 

The main focus of the exhibition is the relationship between modernity, colonialism and primitivism, structured around six interconnected keywords: Civilization, Museum, Naïve, “Portuguese Sea”, “Jazz-Band” and Extraction. This inclusive approach allows for dynamic exploration, transcending fixed chronologies and instead following routes and diagrammatic interrelations, fluxes, tensions and synapsis between texts and images, “high” culture and mass culture. It navigates history, history of art, politics, anthropology and economy, as well as the ideological, social and cultural structure upon which the dissemination of an intense visuality related to the idea of “primitive” is constructed. This exhibition approaches the problems of primitivism from Portugal’s perspective and in relation to the context of dictatorship, colonisation, anti-colonialism, and post-colonialism, via a visual machine full of images and artistic and cultural references that question the invention of the “primitive” and its persistence in contemporaneity.

The exhibition will include works, originals and reproductions, by: Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, António Areal, Canto da Maya, Cottinelli Telmo, Cruzeiro Seixas, Eduardo Batarda, Elo Vega + Rogelio López Cuenca, Ernesto de Sousa, Franklin Vilas Boas, Ilídio Candja Candja, Joaquim Rodrigo, José de Almada Negreiros, José de Guimarães, Ludgero Almeida, Malangatana, Maria Keil, Mário Cesariny, Mário Novais, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Pancho Guedes, Rosa Ramalho, Tarsila do Amaral, Uriel Orlow, Vera Mantero, among others. 

And images from: Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Biblioteca de Arte Gulbenkian, Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, CACE—Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado, Centro de Arte Moderna—Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Cinemateca Portuguesa—Museu do Cinema, Coleção Fundação Millennium bcp, Diamang Digital—Universidade de Coimbra, Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, Herança de Amâncio e Dorothy D’Alpoim Guedes, among others.

The exhibition will also includes a selection of texts by the following thinkers: Achille Mbembe, Aimé Césaire, Alexandre Alves Costa, Álvaro de Campos, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, Amílcar Cabral, André Lepecki, António Ferro, Boris Groys, Deirdre Evans-Pritchard, Diogo de Macedo, Édouard Glissant, Felwine Sarr e Bénédicte Savoy, Françoise Vergès, G. de Medina Camacho, José-Augusto França, José de Almada Negreiros, Karl Marx, Marcelo Caetano, Mário Cesariny, Mário Domingues, Michael Hardt e Toni Negri, Oswald de Andrade, Paul Gilroy, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, Pierre Francastel, Rizvana Bradley e Denise Ferreira da Silva, among others.

Upcoming exhibition
Mauro Cerqueira
December 7, 2024–April 20, 2025

Taking the experience of displacement in Mauro Cerqueira's oeuvre, as a starting point, this solo show, curated by João Terras, aims to explore a visual and scenic “landscape” for engaging with his work.

The core journey of the exhibition arises from the trip in which Mauro Cerqueira (Guimarães, 1982. Lives and works in Porto), along with the artist Babi Badalov, undertook between Paris and Tangier, in 2021. Following the footsteps of the writers Jean Genet and Mohamed Choukri, and prompted by the encounter with Genet's grave at Larache, Mauro Cerqueira films Badalov walking through the streets of Morocco while reading Jean Genet's poem "The Condemned to Death.” 

From Tangier to OPorto, from the screen to the canvas, the exhibition seeks to engage the audience with artists’ phantoms and ideals. Through Mauro Cerqueira’s his multi medium practice of painting, installation, performance and video, most of the time using poor and precarious materials, the exhibition emphasizes a kind of abstractionism of reality, always political and marginal. 

Mauro Cerqueira (b. 1982) is an artist based in OPorto, Portugal. He studied at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions at national and international galleries and institutions such as Institute for New Connovative Action, Seattle; David Dale Gallery, Glasgow; MARCO/ Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra; Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto; Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid; Serralves Museum, Oporto; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Gas Natural Fenosa; Galeria Graça Brandão, Lisboa; La Casa Encendida, Madrid, among others. Cerqueira has been in several residencies including Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva Island, Florida, USA; Grant João Hogan, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany or Ateliê Fidalga, São Paulo, Brazil. His work is included in several international public and private collections such as: Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Museu de Arte Contemporânea Elvas, Portugal; Meana & Larrucea Collection, Spain; Olor Visual Collection, Spain; or , the Lázaro Collection, Spain.

Mauro Cerqueira, along with the artist André Sousa, founded the independent space Uma Certa Falta de Coerência (A Certain Lack of Coherence - ACLoC). Among many others, ACLoC has collaborated with and exhibited the works of artists such as Babi Badalov, Stephan Dillemuth, Dan Graham, Mieko Meguro, Silvestre Pestana, Luisa Cunha, Ani Schulze, June Crespo, Pedro G. Romero, Josephine Pryde, Rigo 23, Daniel Barroca.

Press office A Oficina
Bruno Borges Barreto, brunobarreto@aoficina.pt / T +351 253424715 / 915191218