Filipa CésarPorto ¶ 1975       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão She studied at both the Fine Arts Schools of Lisbon and Porto, and she presently lives in Berlin, as she is doing a Master's in Visual Arts at the Hochshule der Kunst, HDK. ¶ César chose video as her main medium at an early stage of her career, focusing on the relationship between inner and outer space by transforming communication strategies into introversion strategies, as well as the other way around. ¶ The relationship themes that are always at the core of her work have led to a series of works in which the flâneur's digress is transformed into a "meeting". A "meeting", that is, with the perspective of the Other, as if one is that Other, who, always and ultimately, peers through the lens, which César simulates as if belonging to someone in particular. It is as if she's staging a persistent romantic ghost of a happenstance encounter, expressing nostalgia through the notions of community and communication. ¶ The most recurrent theme in her work is that of affection's "empty lots", places of the unfeasibility of communication, such as wide urban sidewalks, supermarkets, or waiting rooms. In such places, characters walk past by in an exercise of an alienating combination of aloofness and expectancy, of emptiness and promise. In Romance (2003), the artist combines two halves, which comprise views from a standard attending desk, and creates the illusion that the two people we see are actually dialoguing with each other, generating a "suspension of disbelief" that immediately moves the viewer. ¶ Although generally speaking we will find the author to have a voyeuristic perspective, by utilizing the other people's gaze and by creating the illusion of a relationship between the ones caught by the gaze, one can also find in her work some choices that imply stage directions. In Lull (2002), for example, César stages a waiting room and the customary characters. We can witness an inversion here: instead of simulating a fiction with documentary material, it is a document that is simulated with a fiction piece. ¶ The artist has recently attempted a combination of both affinities. With the goal of producing more complex work in a narrative sense, she gives a meta-fictional use to documentary mechanisms. In F for Fake (2005), one will find an additional layer of imagination over a movie that is already the fictionalisation of a documentary. The author is showing us that in our day and age of electronics there is no within or without in any given mechanism. Rather, to asking us whether, ultimately, the fictionalisation of a documentary of a fiction leads to yet another documentary or a work of fiction.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeIdb481d2882c   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

Helena AlmeidaLisboa ¶ 1934       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão After graduating in Painting at the Fine Arts School of Lisbon, she had her first individual painting exhibition at the Buchholz gallery in 1967. Her work immediately revealed her conceptual concern with the significance of support; her geometric canvas, with a proclivity towards monochromatism, suggests a flight into the canvas's outer edges. ¶ Throughout the 70s, Almeida's work gradually broke away from traditional formats and methods. The surface of the canvas is as if interrupted by incidens, caused by the use of daily objects or horsehair. The disciplinary definition of her artistic practice is blurred, and drawing, installation and sculpture are brought together on the pictorial surface. ¶ It is, however, when Almeida begins to use photography as her preferred medium that she becomes an integrant part of the international avant-gardes, not to mention the fact that she contributes for the promotion of photography as a validated protagonist in the visual arts. From then onwards, up to the present, a time of both national acclaim and international recognition, her work has consisted of photographic representations of herself as she performs a series of specific movements in her studio. ¶ Helena Almeida's work is a far-reaching research on the support. Whether using photography, video or painting, the question is always focused on the canvas and the body, considering both their nature as supports and the tension that occurs between the two. It is a tension between worlds that exist on both sides of such an imponderable border separating representation from the represented, and the attempt to rise above it by means of transgression practices. In Helena Almeida's work, the body dreams of becoming a canvas as much as the canvas dreams of becoming a body, in the sense that the aspiration of the body is to achieve the canonical rigidity of the canvases, and the canvas yearns for the dissolute corruptibility of the human body. There is a somewhat cinematographic effect in the resulting dialectic between the two contradictory - if not paradoxical - urges. We also come to understand that the chaotic is nothing but the residue of the canonical. ¶ From here to eternity, the artist's body is prone to ambiguity, capsizing the representation-represented axis and reflecting back the gaze we concede it as a gaze upon ourselves.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId3a590588c5   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

João Louro Lisboa ¶ 1963     Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão Having graduated in painting at Ar.Co, his first exhibitions were held in the early 90s. It was also around this time that he joined efforts with João Tabarra, forming the Entertainment Co. duo. The subversive role of these two artists is intimately related to their common interest in the criticism of the conditions of production and the circulation of works of art, as well as all the issues that are relevant to the concepts of authorship and signature. Of their conjoint work, the highlights are the Read my Lips - All Guilty project, presented within the framework of the 1996's Manifesta, in which the "state of the art" triggered a series of interviews to artists and museum directors, emphasizing the role of international circulation for an artist's recognition; but also to Air Bag, The Return of the Real (Museu do Chiado, Lisboa, 1998), in which the artists manipulated the mechanisms of signification and mediatic dissemination, presenting thus a spectacular exhibition whose main criticism is the logic of the spectacle itself. His more recent Blind Paintings were presented at the Venice Biennial 2005. ¶ As for João Louro's individual path, and in tandem with his generation, quoting has become its substantiated and structured device of choice. His work is converted into reading displays, and their meaning is placed beyond the actual object, at the modern, post-industrial society's cultural horizon. There are two sides to the quoting in Louro's work: the nominal aspect, which evokes a name or a designation whose own resonance is communicative, and the formal aspect, given the fact the work itself appropriates the apparent form of a previous work, thus establishing a further link. In his retrospective Blind Runner (Centro Cultural de Bélem, Lisbon, 2004), these two aspects were quite well-connected, drawing up a topography of references that are personal as much as generational, and questioning writing, language, or eliciting a revision of the history of images in contemporary culture. Minimalism and pop culture, structuralism and post-structuralism, authors such as Guy Debord, Georges Bataille and Walter Benjamin, artists such as Donald Judd or the ever-pervading Duchamp, are but part of João Louro's lexicon put to use in order to express his own vision of art and culture, in the form of self-referential systems.    Webpage     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId0c84563528 Ficha Técnica | Credits  

João Pedro ValeLisboa ¶ 1976       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão He studied sculpture at the FBAUL and earned an advanced course diploma in Visual Arts at the Maumaus School. The most expressive reading venue for his work is the American notion of achievement, which brings together art and sports and transfigures the work of art through the fascination with the artist's skills. Skills are that which become the most outstanding feature when we think of Bonfim (2004), a fishing boat covered with what reminds us of the traditional Brazilian Our Lord of Bonfim wrist-ribbons, or of A Culpa Não é Minha (It's not my Fault, 2003), an iron tree wrapped in rope, or even in initial works such as Can I Wash You?, a sort of coin made of blue-and-white soap bars, and Please Don't Go, a carpet made of chewing gum, both made in 1999, when he began his career. ¶ The relationship between art and physical performance becomes quite explicit in works such as Lick My Balls or Beefcake, from 2000, both associated with sports and also evocative of a certain gay imaginary, present in his works since the very beginning, in a militant or, yet more frequently, emotional stance. ¶ Proposing, insistently so, a neurotic revisiting of the Disney universes and Hollywoodian paradigms, João Pedro Vale (re)produces Dorothy's dress (Dorothy, 2001), devoid of its body, Ancient Roman quadrigs and other props from the love triumvirat between Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra (Fatum Nos Coniuncturum Est, 2003), Sleeping Beauty's palace - which we learn that actually belonged to the infamous king Ludwig the 2nd of Baviera, under the name of Neuschwanstein (I Have a Dream, 2002) -, Pinocchio (When You Wish Upon a Star, 2001) or Scarlett O'Hara (Scarlett, 2002). ¶ Although these works trigger an ironic mechanism, content-wise, in formal terms they also produce a drive towards the amorphous and the undifferentiated, clearly breaking away from its cultural context and the associated commentary, in order to witness a Faustian inclination and a morbid obsession that becomes evermore tangible as also the more contrasted the corrupted motifs become.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId873b96ad64   Ficha Técnica | Credits

João Tabarra Lisboa ¶ 1966       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão During the very first phase of his career, he worked together with João Louro in the Entertainment Co. project. Tabarra's solo career would start with the 1997 exhibition What Type of Contestation Are We Asking For, in which he embodied his own representation character after the death of his favorite model, João Ponte Diniz, a.k.a. "Pilha Eléctrica" (or "Electric Battery"), the 1943 lightweight champion of amateur boxing. It was Diniz whom he represented in a polyptic with his own name, presented at the 1995 exhibition Portuguese in Europe and as the main image of the Aperto chapter at the Venice biennial later that year. ¶ Sporting a black and white striped shirt that became infamous with the French sailors of Genet's/ Fassbinder's Querelle de Brest - but also typical of the protagonist of the Where's Wally series as well as of haute couteur Jean Paul Gaultier - the artist strikes a pose in front of both idyllic, unreal backdrops and chaotic, violent landscapes in which the only illusory element is the artist himself. ¶ Having worked as a professional news photographer, it comes as no surprise that photography is the primary medium of Tabarra's work. This fact notwithstanding, it is only at the 2000 No Pain No Gain exhibition that the photo-reportage becomes relevant, artistically speaking. Here, the artist blended the rawness of photographic realism with a staged, delirium-like atmosphere: a transvestite fairy godmother rummages through garbage cans. The imagination-real system short-circuits, and the disturbing incongruity that ensues are the unmistakable traits of João Tabarra's whole oeuvre. An additional characteristic would be the constant mentioning of the "terrain vague", that is, the no-man's land, the empty lots, read as both wastelands and wonderlands, which symbolize a space of wretchedness but a space of potential as well. ¶ In the last few years, video has gained territory in Tabarra's endeavor, and it is through this medium that the artist has presented his most representative productions, staging and demonstrating the possible conflicts between the individual and the collective, with, for instances, Mute Control, presented at the Serralves Foundation in 2000, and Barricades Improvisés (Improvised Barricades) of 2001. Both videos present a particular moment that is the summit of its tension, a point in time that is suspended and hence eternalize the "decisive moment". ¶ But there is also a nostalgic facet to his work. In Poço dos Murmúrios (Wishing Well), presented at the 2002 São Paulo biennial, coins of the new European Union are tossed into a well, with the good wishes remaining silent.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId869a8bb91e   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

Francisco TropaLisboa ¶ 1968       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão He was an undergraduate student at António Arroio, in Lisbon, and finished his studies at Ar.Co, where he has been a teacher in the Sculpture Department since 1996, and from whom he received a scholarship to study at London's Royal College of Arts in 1992. Tropa was also the recipient of a 1995-1996 scholarship of the Alfred Topfel Foundation, of the Münster Kunstakademie. He has won several prizes, including the Amstelveen Award (1997) and the Drawing Award at the Caldas da Rainha biennial (1998). ¶ Although Tropa has been exhibiting since the late 80s, it was the subsequent decade that witnessed the growing recognition of his work, whether from the repeated participations in several collective exhibitions, whose high moment was the project he co-created with Lourdes Castro for the 24th Biennial of São Paulo (1999), or from his participation in the 2003 Venice biennial with his Une table qui aiguisera votre appetit - Le poids poli (A table that'll whet your appetite. The polished weight). ¶ His work is usually focused on the modes of seeing and perceiving spaces, works into which the spectator is drawn in order to reconstruct or bring the work to a permanent conclusion. Therefore, each work must be considered as moment widened in time though restrained where it concerns the time given to the observation and the assimilation of its concepts. His works are, before all, "situations in process" which achieve their own sense through perception and experience. At a crossroads of performance and installation, Francisco Tropa creates ambiences that have a clear concern in understanding scientifically the volume that is occupied by the various objects, and by the behaviour they have within a given space (Aproximando pessoas creativas, Approaching creative people, 2002, Porta 33 gallery, in Funchal). The artist bestows upon his projects an elegance that is quite close to the Minimalist reductions, although one may find subtle references to the geometrising abstraction of the historical Avant-gardes. Density, gravity, mass, volume, space. Such are the keywords of Tropa's artistic lexicon, more often than not associated to motion-generating mechanisms. Nonetheless, the materials are quite diverse: as sound (Os Potes e Farol, The Vases and the Lightning House, 2002), words, water waves and dust, (Observatório de Pó, Dust Observatory, 1996). The methods are equally variable and in accordance to the accidents of the given work. If his works fulfil their significance at both a sensorial and cognitive level, it is through observation (Observatório de Insectos, Insect Observatory, 1996, and Projecto Casalinho, Casalinho Project, 1997); the spectator interacts and becomes one with the objects, in a process of self-knowledge.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId67af684be0   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

Joana Vasconcelos Paris ¶ 1971     Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão She studied at Ar.Co from 1989 to 1996, and at IADE, in Lisbon, from 1991 to 1992. In 2000 she was given the New Artists EDP Award and in 2003 she was awarded the Tabaqueira Fund for Public Art, for her intervention project in the Largo da Academia das Belas Artes (Lisbon). Since 1994 she has regularly exhibited her work, both nationally and internationally, and she has recently achieved a high level of international recognition, especially through her participation at the 2005 Venice biennial. ¶ From the outset of her career Vasconcelos has used variegated daily objects, transforming and organizing them in order to create the most unexpected of sculptures, constructions, and atmospheres. These are in point of fact sculptures - forms in space i.e., - but Vasconcelos's work is quite remote from traditional understandings of sculpture, plunging right into the highbrow/lowbrow art dichotomy, by alluding to kitsch or pop source material. The examples range from the funnels-cum-monument in Tolerância Zero (Zero Tolerance, 1999), the multitude of objects that become the focus of a voyeuristic contemplation, enclosed in a glass box with blinds in Vista Interior (Inner View, 2000), the dusters that encircle a sensual space in Flores do meu Desejo (The Flowers of my Desire, 1996), the OB tampons which invoke a candid universe in Noiva (Bride, 2001, and re-presented at the Venice biennial in 2005), to the fur coats that bring some warmth in opposition to the coldness suggested by the refrigerators' doors in Menu do Dia (Day's Menu, 2001). ¶ The suppleness with which the artist uses such unexpected materials and objects - unexpected in artistic practice, that is - is probably due to the fact that prior to her engagement with the visual arts scene she studied jewellery and design, developing a very acute receptivity towards the playfulness of the different sizes as well as the possible disruptions of an object's appointed functions, not to mention an enhanced conscience of the alluring efficiency of its colours and contrasts. ¶ Her work indicates both the evidence of presence and the power of communication. It is impossible not to grasp this facet, given the fact that these works are able to convey to us the screaming echoes of reality itself, from beyond the flamboyant and spectacular façade that we're confronted with in the first place. In 2006 Vasconcelos made the sculpture Néctar, a commission by the Berardo Foundation for the main entrance of the exhibition centre of the Centro Cultural de Belém.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId91323fef92   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

João OnofreLisboa ¶ 1976       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão He studied painting at the Fine Arts School of Lisbon, and completed his studies with a MFA at the Goldsmith College in London. ¶ One of the most successful artists of his generation, Onofre was honoured with a very early international exhibition of his work, being invited by curator Harald Szeemann for the 2001 Venice biennial. ¶ Working exclusively with video, the artist has explored the performative potential of the medium, by a classical disposition of an express time and space unity, the setting of extremely proficient communicational situations, whose efficiency, where the "message" is concerned, is rounded off by quoting strategies. One must not understand this to be quoting in its strictest sense, but rather in its wide cultural consequence, including its emotional facets and the dexterity with which the artist is able to operate it. ¶ Onofre presents an immense nostalgia for Modernity's universe of references, revisiting its myths with a look at one time clinical and sentimental. In this line of thought, the Neo-Realist voluntarism is evoked by the re-enactment of the last sentence from Roberto Rosselini's Stromboli in a casting call full of young aspiring models whose ineffable shallowness is painfully disparate from the sentence's dramatic clout: ''Che io abbia la forza, la convinzione e il coraggio" ("That I may have the force, the conviction and the courage"). ¶ Just as Onofre lines up his actors and extras or draws up his situations in front of the cameras, we may also draw up some of the other themes he has pursued. Among these are the mechanization of the human, in Instrumental Version (2001), a video that portraits a university chorus singing a transcription of Kraftwerk's electronic song The Robots; the sheer hopelessness of communicating in a love relationship, in the video that expands a sequence from Fassbinder's Martha; the unconscious' wild force, taken as a romantic paradigm for artistic production and the ensuing tension with civilizational restraint, in Untitled (Vulture in the Studio) (2002), that shows a vulture flying about the artist's studio. ¶ By making evident Modernity's history of expectancy, Onofre uses video in order to invoke a theatre stage. Adding a meta-filiation level to his production, Onofre accordingly reaffirms at a formal level what is most dear to him in terms of content: the nostalgia for an era irrevocably lost in and for electronics.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeIdbc391722b0   Ficha Técnica | Credits  

João Penalva Lisboa ¶ 1949       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão His first artistic career was that of a dance interpreter, from 1968 to 1976, and his studies in the area guided him through Paris, Lisbon and London. He was a member of the following companies: Pina Bausch (1973/4), Gerhard Bohner (1975) and his very own, with Jean Pomares (The Moon Dance Company, 1976). With a residency in London from 1976 onwards, he commenced a career in the visual arts field, as soon as he was accepted in the Chelsea School of Art. ¶ He started with paintings - regularly exhibited in Portugal and England since the mid-80s - paintings with a strong compositional element, through the contrasts conveyed by the rhythmic organization of the conflicting surfaces in terms of colour, texture, and image patterns. ¶ In the 90s he turns to site-specific installations and interventions, inaugurating a research chapter in his career that stills continues today. In works such as Arquivos (Archives, 1993) or La chiave a stella (The key to the stars, 1996), both presented in Porto, Penalva evokes the universe of language, of the communication of memories and experiences, through texts, documents, translations, and the very impossibility of translating a text without falling into some degree of imperfection as far as meaning is concerned. One of the most distinctive facets of Penalva's work is the inclusion of letters or texts that relate stories. It adds a new layer to the work presented, adjoining fiction to reality, as in O Cabelo do Sr. Ruskin (Mr. Ruskin's Hair lock, 1997). ¶ As for the videos and films of the last ten years, from 336 Rios (336 Rivers, 1998), to Kitsune o espírito da raposa (Kitsune, the Fox Spirit, 2001) or Mister (1999), the artist singles out characters and stories from the most quotidian of universes and puts them centre-stage, thus granting his works a strong sense of theatricality and narrative, as well as bringing it close to the performance arts scene (Widow Simone-Entracte 20 years, 1996). João Penalva comes forth as an author/character whose distinct mark is his own capacity to reinvent himself, while at the same time showing substantial creative power, whatever the circumstance. ¶ In more recent work, such as Hermitage Pier (2004) and Entre as 2 e as 3 (Between 2 and 3, 2004), the characters have been substituted by the sounds and the movements of the spaces registered by the camera. With no narrative voice, we witness a research on the medium of video. Recently, however, more disturbing, even violent elements have been added, as in Quieto, de pé, pára, não (Still, stand, stop, no, 2005).     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeId7d8c794f3f Ficha Técnica | Credits  

João Vieira Vidago ¶ 1934       Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits:Abílio Leitão He entered the Fine Arts School of Lisbon in 1951, but after a period of disappointment with Lisbon's artistic education circles, and a subsequent isolation interlude in his homeland, he returned to the capital and engaged in intense, original artistic activities. Not only did he manage to exhibit, individually, at the Diário de Notícias gallery in 1959, but in the same year he also was the recipient of an annual Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship which took him to Paris to study with painter Arpad Szènes. In Paris he also met René Bertholo and Lourdes Castro, with whom he would set up the KWY magazine project. In 1964 he began lecturing at the Maidstone College of Art, in London, while rubbing shoulders with Britain's art milieu. In 1967 he returned to Lisbon for good. ¶ João Vieira's work has developed over more than five decades, but fundamentally under the sign of an interdisciplinary experimentation, applied to two basic themes: the body and the letter. It is "from" the body - clearly at stake in his first works, his performative acts, which, within the Portuguese context, were evidently groundbreaking - that Vieira reaches the latter, by tapping into the graphic capabilities of the body being turned into a letter, engulfing both of them in multiple plasticities and festivities, or by exploiting exercises that draw the spectator into participating in the discovery of space and time. Expansões (Expansions, 1971) and Incorpório I (Incorporeal I, 1972) are famous examples of the relationship Vieira establishes between his own body and giant letters, immense malleable foam objects that can be adapted to the body. ¶ In the early 90s he created a pictorial series in which numbers replaced the letters and all the alphabetical experiences. Of the last worlds created by João Vieira, we should emphasize the Alfabeto Latino e Grego (Latin and Greek Alphabet, 2000): this consisted of 18 elements made of transparent but coloured plexiglas that were cut and reassembled in such a way that it produced a psychedelic ambient, in which the visual experience of the colourful, alphabetical-alluding letters seemed to underline the unique pleasure that has always radiated from Vieira's oeuvre.     View the embedded image gallery online at: http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/biografias-en/page-15-dp4.html?1=j1IwW&2=j1IwW&3=j1IwW#sigFreeIdfbfef677fb   Ficha Técnica | Credits