CONTINGERE

Ana Fonseca | Bettina Vaz Guimarães | João Távora | Jorge Leal | Liene Bosquê  Maya Weishof | Miguel Santos | Susana Anágua | Zoë Sua Kay

Curated by | Mariana Hartenthal

CONTINGERE is the Latin root for "contingency", "contact" and "contagion".

The exhibition, which brings together nine artists at Galeria Cisterna, is the result of some of the many contingencies that define our time. The works presented do not necessarily respond to the pandemic or were produced during the crisis, but in them we find themes that are now unavoidable. The contact with the skin and the body, as important as it is dangerous, is presented in the paintings by Maya Weishof and Zoë Sua Kay. The impossibility of work and the weight of absence and distance are announced by Susana Anágua's installations. Ana Fonseca's cupcakes evoke the postponement of pleasure. The house appears as both refuge and prison in the pieces by Bettina Vaz Guimarães and Liene Bosquê. In Jorge Leal's drawings we recall the longing for the open horizon of the landscape. We find nature as both cure and threat in the works of João Távora and nature, not threatened but threatened, in the photographs by Miguel Santos. More than provocations inherent to the works, these and other readings result from our contaminated gaze that projects pandemic perceptions on almost everything we see. Contingere takes this view without romanticizing the disease or diminishing the impact of the crisis.