The starting point of investigation of the exhibition Blind Sun - at Culturgest Porto - are networks of subaquatic cables that cross the ocean and transmit information. The infrastructures that today host and connect the global knowledge system are mostly thin silicon cables covered with latex, crossing the depths of our planet. They are removed from the view of consumers of digital worlds. As well as many stories that could hinder or limit their reach, but that made the cloud possible.
The works in the exhibition evoke dimensions both of the natural and the human world. Such dimensions represent processes of creation, circulation, and destruction. From the sun nuclear fusion, the source of life on this planet (Blind sun), to the under(water)world (Hadean Stories), in which the first organic life evolved and, today, crossed by human-made systems of connection - subaquatic cables (Third Nature). The energy circulating in such systems is carrying the imaginary feeding our contemporary social models, with their creative but also destructive potential (Unproductive Glory).
The ceramic sculptures scattered across the floor of the rooms allude to a kind of archaeology of communication networks, constructing a landscape contaminated by contact with the devouring organicity of the environment. They seem to possess a timeless quality and an undefined status as if they had survived the wear of time and the strain of their dubious origin. It is almost as if a third nature emerges here, indiscernible in the symbiosis between the organic and the artificial.
The exhibition is an immersive experience, in which the multiple relationships constituting the environments we inhabit, imagine, and produce, are evoked. Each room represents a microcosm - created through light, sculptures, images, and sound. In such an environment, the sound (Blind Sun 2019) works as a bridging element. It crosses architecture, recalling the relationships of the whole.
Installation views of Blind Sun. (exhibition 24 february 2020 – July 2020), Culturgest (Porto, PT). Mixed Media (Porcelain, stoneware, copper, alum crystals, sound (30 m), video projection full HD (6 m) (4,30 m). Sound piece with the collaboration of Roberto Francesco Dani (composer) and Beatriz Ventura (singer) © Photos by Alexandre Delmar
CURATOR Delfim Sardo, CURATORIAL ASSISTANT Sílvia Gomes, PRODUCTION COORDINATOR António Sequeira Lopes, PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Pedro Lagoa, ARTIST ASSISTANT Jessica da Silva (trainee), Theani Amarasuriya, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ana Bustorff Martinho, Anselmo Gomes, Ar.Co – Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual, Ceramic Workshop of the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Fábrica Bordallo Pinheiro, Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht, Jimmie Durham, José de Arimateia, Luciana Florence, Maria Thereza Alves, Nuno Barra, Patrícia Pereira, Tiago Mendes, Vasco Futscher