Helena Almeida, Saída negra [Black Exit], 1995 (detail). 5 B/w photographs. 71 x 48 cm (each) Coll. Norlinda and José Lima on long term loan to Núcleo de Arte da Oliva Creative Factory Photo: Aníbal Lemos, courtesy Núcleo de Arte da Oliva Creative Factory English EXHIBITION HELENA ALMEIDA MY WORK IS MY BODY, MY BODY IS MY WORK 17 OCT 2015 10 JAN 2016
Helena Almeida (Lisbon, 1934) has been producing work since the 1960s in which the importance of the body registering, occupying and defining space and its performative encounter with the world have been central concerns. With over eighty works in painting, photography, video, and drawing, this exhibition brings together the photographic series for which the artist is best known with rarely seen works from throughout her pioneering artistic career. Almeida s early abstract paintings, presented in the first galleries of the exhibition, introduce main themes in her work, namely the interest in addressing the limits of pictorial and narrative space. A series of untitled canvases from 1968 69 reveal a process of confronting traditional artistic media and the language of painting. The artist rolls up the canvas, hanging it as a window shade; or displays it as a soft structure, undressing or collapsing under its own weight; or turns its surface translucent, revealing the underlying stretcher-bars. In additional works from the same series, the canvas is dislocated from its frame, while coloured canvases hang from a transparent bag extending from another painting, like detritus or leftovers. I started off with a familiar language. ( ) I wasn t going to create abstract art and little by little all those elements started coming out of the picture. After that, the canvas started to destroy itself. It was a kind of destruction, a need to put an end to painting ( ) like a window opening, a blind being pulled up, a canvas being pulled. ( ) I say the destruction of the painting because the canvas ended up being anthropomorphic. It ended up identifying itself with me. 1 Tela habitada [Inhabited Canvas] (1976) extends Almeida s confrontation with the painting to her own body, introducing a performative dimension to her work. While these paintings, many in the Serralves Collection, survive, much of Almeida s early work is either lost or its location is unknown. These are represented in the exhibition through photographic reproduction and archive documents. In the late 1960s, Almeida started to produce a series of sculptural drawings by applying horsehair string to works on paper or cardboard. These drawings leap out of the paper to project outside, making the drawing three-dimensional and tangible as it invades the space of the viewer. They are part of a series that was to last throughout the following decade. As the artist explains, I never made my peace with the canvas with paper or with any other medium. I think that what has made me break away from the medium, through volumes, threads and many other means, was always a huge dissatisfaction regarding the issues of space. By either confronting, or denying them, they have been the one true constant in all my works. I would not be far from the truth by saying that I paint painting and draw drawing. 2 The introduction of photography into Almeida s work in the 1970s allowed for an exploration of the gap between inner subjective states and their visible outer form. The transformation of the thread into a line (Desenhos habitados [Inhabited Drawings]), the inscription of a blue brush stroke onto a photograph (Pinturas habitadas [Inhabited Paintings] and Estudos para um enriquecimento interior [Studies for Inner Improvement]) or the act of putting on the canvas itself represent an 1. Conversation between Helena Almeida and María de Corral, in Helena Almeida, exh. cat., Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 2000, pp. 171 72. 2. Helena Almeida quoted in Isabel Carlos, in Helena Almeida: Dias quase tranquilos, Lisbon: Caminho, 2005, p. 13.
action, a mark, a register of presence. Regarding the choice of the colour blue, the artist stated I use blue because it s a spatial colour. If I used green or yellow, it would be a disaster. Or brown. It has to be blue. I sometimes use red: it s a colour that has other meanings, it has weight. I use it when I don t want to make space. I use blue to show space. Or when I open my mouth, I put blue there. It s really space, it s swallowing the painting. It s putting space in the painting. It s grabbing the painting It has to be blue. 3 In the late 1970s, Almeida s images become directly emotive and sensorial in the series Ouve-me [Hear Me] (1978 80), Sente-me [Feel Me] (1979), Vê-me [See Me] (1979) and A casa [The House] (1979). The words hear me are seen as if stitched into the artist s lips; images of the artist gagged, sutured or stifled by a canvas, against which she presses her mouth and hands. In her sound piece Vê-me, Almeida recorded the sound produced while drawing; the goal was not to make a descriptive recording of an action but rather to give the feeling of space in movement, entering and being within the vibrant zones of the drawing, becoming one with it and forming a physical space, manipulated, divided, cut, full and empty. 4 In the 1980s and 1990s, a change in format and scale introduces the human figure at near life size, its movements and expression reduced to a black outline or shadow, such as in Dentro de mim [Inside Me] (1995 98). In drawings and photographs, this human figure marks its presence and casts its shadow as thick black pigment that draws diagonal lines on the floor; the hands and feet drag along traces of painting in the studio s emptied space. The 2006 series O abraço [The Embrace] reveals two figures with their backs to the viewer, twisting each other in the confined, limited space of a stool. In these works, Artur Rosa, Almeida s husband and lifelong collaborator appears for the first time in front of the camera. On this subject, the artist says that he is another space. He is what was outside of me. 5 Text by Rita Martins, Museum Educator 3. Helena Almeida in conversation with Marta Moreira de Almeida and João Ribas, An Unfinished Conversation, in Helena Almeida: My Work is My Body, My Body is My Work, exh. cat., Porto: Fundação de Serralves, Paris: Jeu de Paume, Brussels: WIELS, 2015. 4. Helena Almeida, Vê-me, 1979, audio recording (32 min) and text. 5. Helena Almeida, An Unfinished Conversation, op. cit.
BIOGRAPHY Helena Almeida was born in Lisbon in 1934. She studied Painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts and has been exhibiting her work regularly since the late 1960s. From the very beginning of her career, Almeida has explored and questioned traditional media, particularly painting, constantly seeking to break away from the pictorial plane. The works displayed in her first solo show (Galeria Buchholz, Lisbon, 1967) already revealed a critical exercise on painting: whilst showing that which, in a painting, is supposed to be hidden, the artist investigates the corporeal and the materiality of painting s traditional support, the canvas. Recent international exhibitions at Kettle s Yard, Cambridge (2009) Fundación Telefónica, Madrid (2009), The Drawing Centre, New York the Sydney Biennial (2004) and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela (2000), have brought greater recognition of this artist s significance both in relation to Portuguese art but in a wider international context. Almeida has represented Portugal twice at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and 2005. Her work is included in a large number of public and private collections both in Portugal and abroad.
Entrance to the exhibition ATRIUM Bookshop PÁTIO DA ADELINA Entrance to the Museum Floor 3
PROGRAMME Screening of Helena Almeida: Pintura habitada [Helena Almeida: Inhabited Painting] introduced by Joana Ascenção, film director Portugal, 2006, colour, 50 14 NOV (SAT), 6 pm Auditorium The film Pintura habitada focus on the various stages and elements involved in the meticulous creative process through which Helena Almeida builds her works, from initial studies to exhibiting the finished works, showcasing how the body (the hands are a crucial example) inhabits her painting, her photographs and her videos. The film was sponsored by the Instituto das Artes / Ministério da Cultura, The Luso-American Development Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. I was here, Conference-demonstration by João Fiadeiro, choreographer 28 NOV (SAT), 4 pm / Auditorium GUIDED TOURS With Sónia Borges, Museum Educator 25 OCT (SUN), 12 pm With João Ribas and Marta Moreira de Almeida, Curators of the exhibition Exclusive for Members 05 NOV (THU), 7.30 pm With João Pedro Vale, Artist 05 DEC (SAT), 5 pm With Raquel Correia, Museum Educator 13 DEC (SAT), 12 pm With João Ribas and Marta Moreira de Almeida, Curators of the exhibition 10 JAN (SUN), 12 pm João Fiadeiro s conference performance I was here visits the universe of Helena Almeida. Between performance and document, I was here illustrates through films, photographs, texts, models, brief demonstrations an encounter with the artist s work.
FAMILIES AT SERRALVES Workshop: Here, My Body is Painting and Drawing 25 OCT (SUN), 10 am With Cristina Camargo Oficinas de Artes, Lda, Museum Educator Education Room (Museum) Workshop: Imaginary Painting 01 NOV (SUN), 10 am With Rita Faustino, Museum Educator Education Room (Museum) Workshop: Threadbare Drawings 15 NOV (SUN), 10 am With Raquel Correia and Sónia Borges, Museum Educators Education Room (Museum) CHRISTMAS AT SERRALVES Workshop: Imaginary Painting 06 and 19 DEC (SUN) 10 am 5 pm With Rita Faustino, Museum Educator Education Room (Museum)
Helena Almeida: My Work is My Body, My Body is My Work is co-produced by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Jeu de Paume, Paris, and WIELS, Brussels. Curators: Marta Moreira de Almeida and João Ribas Registration and transport: Daniela Oliveira Exhibition design advisors: Ana Maio, R2 Design Installation team: João Brites, Ricardo Dias, Carlos Lopes, Manuel Martins, Adelino Pontes, Lázaro Silva Video: Carla Pinto Sound: Nuno Aragão Light: Rui Barbosa Education: Denise Pollini (Head of Education), Diana Cruz, Cristina Lapa In association with the exhibition Helena Almeida: My Work is My Body, My Body is My Work at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, from 17 October until 13 December 2015 the Teatro Nacional São João presents in its Salão Nobre Helena Almeida s Untitled 1994 95, a work specifically conceived for the artist s exhibition at the Serralves Villa in 1995 and part of the Serralves Collection since then. Institutional Support Exclusive Sponsor of the Exhibition Exclusive Sponsor of the Museum Seguradora Oficial: Fidelidade Companhia de Seguros, S.A. Fundação de Serralves / Rua D. João de Castro, 210. 4150 417 Porto / www.serralves.pt / serralves@serralves.pt / Information: 808 200 543 PARK Entrance by Largo D. João III (next to École française)