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Events

ARTISTS, HERITAGE AND THE MUSEUM

Opening:1st february 2022|h10-h17
Vernissage:12th february | h17-h20
Exhibition: 1st-28th february 2022 |Tuesday – Sunday, 10h-17h

On 1 February, from 5pm, the group exhibition “Heritage Artists and the Museum” by the artists José de Guimarães; Julien Creuzet; Kiluanji Kia Henda; Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela; Sergio Verastegui; Susana Gaudêncio and Théo Mercier will open at the Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência of the University of Lisbon.

Inserted into the official calendar of the France-Portugal 2022 Season, this initiative bears the seal of the CeiED – Universidade Lusofona and is organized by Marta Jecu and Sofia Marçal (MUHNAC).

The Portugal-France Season 2022 is a bilateral diplomacy initiative between Portugal and France, which aims to deepen cultural relations between these two countries.

In the context of a recent preoccupation with extra-European heritage, the history of scientific museology and the colonial and postcolonial thought associated with it, the institution museum and the way in which it frames history, have been intensely scrutinized. The project analyzes museums as a means of viewing heritage: beyond the institution itself, the museum represents a medium for communicating information. The project is a reflection on the question of heritage – personal, global – and aims to think about this question with a multidisciplinary and dynamic methodology.

The project considers this question from a historical and recent perspective by examining how contemporary art has integrated this “media” and gradually reformed and democratized “the museological device”. Contemporary art has been identified in the field of new museology as a creative factor which, once introduced into museums as a tool for rethinking museological display, can stimulate critical public involvement in the assimilation of museological content. The project therefore aims to map and theorize emerging methodologies that engage contemporary art for the reinterpretation of the “museological device”.

The exhibition is part of a bilateral multidisciplinary project, organized by Marta Jecu, which is integrated and supported by the France-Portugal Season 2022.

The bilateral project includes the following EVENTS in 2022:

  • Educational program for the general public, with members of the Department of Museology of the Universidade Lusófona.
    MUHNAC Lisbon | February 20-28, 2022
  • Conference at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH), Paris with French researchers and students from this institution and the Universidade Lusofona Lisboa, opening up the cross-cutting issue of contemporary art as a tool for rethinking heritage.
    FMSH Paris, October 3-7, 2022
  • Performative events and conversations in Arles, organized in collaboration with the HighArt gallery, Paris/Arles.
    Arles | July 2022
  • Publication/catalogue, with artistic and research material. A collaboration of the Department of Museology of the Universidade Lusófona Lisboa, CeiED Universidade Lusofona Lisboa, La Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH), Paris
  • Raphael Grisey’s Art Residence, referring to the Botanical Garden’s collection of plants and seeds.
    MUHNAC | April 2022.

Partners

Artists’ Bio

José de Guimarães (Portugal, 1939)

He is one of the great Portuguese artists with an extremely prolific and diverse oeuvre in painting, sculpture and other creative activities, which has marked contemporary art history since the 1960s. He lives and works between France and Portugal creating cultural connections and collaborations with significant cultural figures in both cultures.

His first solo exhibition in Paris was in 1979, followed by numerous exhibitions worldwide. Many of his works are exhibited in various European museums as well as in the United States of America, Brazil, Canada, Israel and Japan. José de Guimarães founded the Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães (CIAJG) in Guimarães, where artistic programming is dominated by the fusion between the artist’s vast ethnographic collections housed at the CIAJG and the work of young artists invited for residencies.

Julien Creuzet (France, 1986)

He is a French-Caribbean artist who lives and works in Paris. A visual artist and poet, he actively interweaves these two practices through amalgams of sculpture, installation and textual intervention that often address his own experience in diaspora. Creuzet has recently had solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou for the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2021), Document (2020), Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2019), High Art, Paris (2019), CAN Centre d’Art Neuchâtel (2019), Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2018) and Bétonsalon, Paris (2018). Creuzet has also exhibited in group shows at Wesleyan University Museum of Art (2021), Sweet Pass Sculpture Park (2021) and Musee d’Art Moderne de Paris (2020).

Sergio Verastegui (Peru, 1981)

He currently lives in Paris after having studied at the School of Visual Arts in Rio de Janeiro and at the École Nationale Supérieure d’art Villa Arson in Nice. The scarcity of means and gestures forms the basis of Sergio Verastegui’s reflection on the question of the relationship with reality. In his work the artist deconstructs the ‘museum’, analysing its incipient and primitive forms. He is creating autonomous objects that evoke the misappropriation historically practised by museums and reflect classical principles of ‘musealisation’.

Bringing together a strong material presence and conceptualism, Sergio Verastegui’s works appear as fragments of realities extracted from a torn world. In his artistic career, Sergio Verastegui has held numerous exhibitions in three continents and won the Prix Jeune Creation in 2013, followed by an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Susana Gaudêncio (Portugal, 1978)

Susana Gaudêncio holds a BA in Painting from the University of Lisbon and an MFA from Hunter College, NYC (CUNY). She is a PhD researcher at the University of Lisbon, with the theme “O Impulso Utópico na prática da Arte Contemporânea”. She has exhibited her work at the Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Museu da Eletricidade in Lisbon; Centro de Artes Visuais (CAV) in Coimbra; the Liverpool Biennale; the ISE Foundation in NYC, etc. Gaudêncio coordinates the Education Programme of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. She is a lecturer at the Escola Superior de Arte e Design, in Caldas da Rainha, teaching on the MFA Programme.

Her work is generally research-based and combines complex drawings, photomontages and animations, made by modifying personal and found images. Her projects elaborate the relationship between the historical legacy of artistic production as a platform to find new possibilities for questioning utopia, which she understands as a critical device.

Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela (Portugal, 1984, 1985)

Duo Artista has received numerous national and international awards since 2010. Their work is critical and poetic. Luminous Shadow shown in this exhibition was born from an artist residency developed in the proximity of the collection of the Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães and revolves around the work of José de Guimarães. Through the manipulation of images and sounds from the Centre’s exhibitions, catalogues and conversations, an experimental language is assembled, seeking to establish a recombination of times and contexts.

Théo Mercier (France, 1984)

He is a French sculptor, painter and photographer. He graduated as a designer and is self-taught as an artist. He interned with Matthew Barney in 2008. His work explores the intersection of anthropology, ethnography, geopolitics and tourism. She has an important international career, having exhibited her work in museums such as the Quai Branly Paris, the Museum of Arts in Mexico, Villa Medici Rome and participated in major biennials. His work is based on a surreal and oneiric imaginary populated by singular, mysterious and often monstrous creatures. Most of Théo Mercier’s pieces result from a process of anthropomorphization of objects (found objects, assemblages, overlays, collages or transplants), usually resulting in presences that are old and young, male and female.

Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979)

In his multimedia work, Kia Henda rethinks history, whether through sculpture, installation, video and photography, or large-scale installations. Parallel stories divert the history of his native Angola with alternative scenarios linked to the history of the “museology of Angolan culture”.

With an important international career, Kia Henda in 2012 won the National Prize for Culture and Arts, awarded by the Angolan Ministry of Culture, in 2017 he won the Frieze Artist Award and in 2019 he was selected for the Unlimited Basel project. Recently Kia Henda has also participated in the following selected exhibitions: THE SHADOWS TOOK FORM, The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, 2013; PRODUCING THE COMMON, Dakar Biennale, Dakar, 2014; THE DIVINE COMEDY, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt and Smithsonian Institute, Washington, 2014; SURROUND THE AUDIENCE, New Museum Triennial, New York, 2015; MUSEUM (SCIENCE) FICTIONS – MUSEUM ON/OFF, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, 2016; CONSTELLATIONS, Tate Gallery, 2017.

Her work is present in several public and private collections, such as Museum of Modern Art, Warwaw, Poland; Tate Modern, Collection of Contemporary Art, London, England; Fondazione di Venezia, Public Collection, Venice, Italy; Sindika Dokolo, African Collection of Contemporary Art, Luanda, Angola; Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia; Collezione Sciarretta (Nomas Foundation), Private Collection, Rome, Italy.

Curators’ Bio

Marta Jecu (Romania, 1978)

Lives and works in Lisbon. Graduated in Art History and Anthropology and PhD at the Free Universitaet Berlin. She is a researcher at CeiED, Universidade Lusófona, Lisbon and an independent curator. She has worked for the last three years at the research laboratories Imera Aix Marseille University and at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris. Before that, she was an integrated researcher at CICANT, Universidade Lusófona, Lisbon. She has published in magazines such as: E-Flux, Kaleidoscope, Berlin Art Link, Idea Art + Society, Journal of Curatorial Studies, Esse Arts + Opinions and in several books. In 2017 he started the research and curatorial project EXODUS STATIONS on the role of contemporary art for the new museology.

Recent curatorial exhibitions: 2021, On the Landscape, Romanian Cultural Centre, Lisbon, 2019 and 2020 ‘A Cultural Interpretation of Stone, parts I and II, at Galerie Cabinet d’Ulysse Marseille and Galeria Sa da Costa, Lisbon. 2018 Solo Show Tadashi Kawamata at MAAT Lisbon. 2017 – Solo Show George Bodocan Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris and others. He edited the volumes Marta Jecu (Ed.): Subtle Construction, Bypass, Malmo, Lisbon, 2011; OPEN MONUMENT, Revolver Verlag, Berlin. Her volume Architecture and the Virtual was published in 2016 at the University of Chicago Press (USA) and Intellect Book (UK).

www.exodusstations.com

www.martajecu.com

Sofia Marçal (Portugal, 1964)

Museologist and curator at the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon since 2001, where she has been developing work on the intersection between art and science through numerous exhibitions, catalogues and conferences.

Masters in Museology from the University of Évora in 2004. PhD in Curatorship by FBAUL, in 2019. Collaborating member of CIEBA – Centre for Research and Studies in Fine Arts. Secretary of the Board of Directors of ICOM, since March 2020.