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18 MAIO A 17 NOVEMBRO
Troubles with primitivism - a view from Portugal
Todas as idades
Event
It can be considered that what became known as "primitivism" has a long history, but it was at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that it was expressed unequivocally. Colonization and fascisms, along with the development of mass culture and consumption amidst Europe's malaise, spurred fascination and fetishization around cultures that were considered "remote," "primordial," "primitive," "naïve," "archaic," "savage," "primeval," among other designations. The appreciation and valorization by artists, intellectuals, and art dealers of objects from non-European territories, mostly colonized, but also from local contexts such as folk art, along with the exponential development of image reproduction techniques, spread the primitivist aesthetic in the visual culture of modernity in the West.
Primitivism was a way for art to renew itself and assert its modernity, an artistic practice of returning to origins and (re)beginnings. It brought about a true aesthetic revolution in 20th-century Western art, while simultaneously emptying the temporality and history of the objects it considered "primitive," relegating them to an indeterminate distant past. In times of fascisms and imperialisms, it served both as a nationalist tool legitimizing the colonial project and as a libertarian and anti-colonial tool, as many intellectuals and artists drew from primitivist ideals driven by a desire to subvert the established social order. However, stereotypes, prejudices, and a homogeneous vision of the "Other" were present in the various, sometimes conflicting and antagonistic, uses of primitivism.
Problems of Primitivism — from Portugal is an exhibition that, based on extensive research in Portuguese archives and collections, interrogates "primitivism" and the contradictions of this historical and cultural process from the perspective of this country. Investigative and experimental in nature, and without the pretense of exhausting the subject, the curatorial proposal calls upon the entire museum for a critical approach through a polyphony of voices in the sources and among the invited authors and artists.
Six interrelated keywords organize the exhibition: Civilization, Museum, Naïve, "Portuguese Sea," "Jazz Band," and Extraction. Through them, what is shown is not a fixed chronology, but diagrammatic paths and correlations, flows, tensions, and synapses between texts and images, as well as the interaction between "high" culture and mass culture, between history, art history, politics, anthropology, and economics, and also the ideological, social, and cultural structure upon which the dissemination of an intense visuality related to the idea of the "primitive" was based.
The exhibition addresses the problems of primitivism from Portugal in its relations with the context of dictatorship, colonization, anti-colonialism, and post-colonialism, in a visual machine imbued with artistic and cultural images and references that problematize the invention of the "primitive" and its persistence into contemporary times.
Artists, Authors, and Works (Selection)
Works, reproductions, texts, and quotations
Achille Mbembe, Aimé Césaire, Alexandre Alves Costa, Álvaro de Campos, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, Amílcar Cabral, André Lepecki, António Areal, António Ferro, Bernardo Marques, Boris Groys, Canto da Maya, Cottinelli Telmo, Cristina Roldão, José Augusto Pereira and Pedro Varela, Cruzeiro Seixas, Deirdre Evans-Pritchard, Diogo de Macedo, Édouard Glissant, Eduardo Batarda, Eduardo Malta, Eduardo Viana, Egídia Souto and Philippe Charlier, Elo Vega + Rogelio López Cuenca, Ernesto de Sousa, Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, Fernando de Azevedo, Françoise Vergès, Franklin Vilas Boas, G. de Medina Camacho, Ilídio Candja Candja, Joana Cunha Leal, Joaquim Rodrigo, Jorge Barradas, José de Almada Negreiros, José de Guimarães, José Neves, José-Augusto França, Júlio Reis Pereira, Karl Marx, Kaúlza de Arriaga, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Ludgero Almeida, Malangatana, Marcelo Caetano, Margarida Cafede Moura, Maria Cardeira da Silva, Maria Keil, Mariana Pinto dos Santos, Mário Cesariny, Mário Domingues, Mário Novais, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Marta Mestre, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Nuno Porto, Oswald de Andrade, Pancho Guedes, Paul Gilroy, Pêro Vaz de Caminha, Pierre Francastel, Querubim Lapa, Rita Chaves, Rizvana Bradley and Denise Ferreira da Silva, Rosa Ramalho, Tarsila do Amaral, Tiago Saraiva, Uliano Lucas, Uriel Orlow, Vera Mantero, Vera Marques Alves, Virgílio Correia, Wladimir Brito
Archives and Museums (Selection)
Almanak Silva, Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Biblioteca de Arte Gulbenkian, Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, BLX-Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa, Casa Comum/Fundação Mário Soares e Maria Barroso, CACE – Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado, Centro de Arte Moderna – Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema, Coleção Fundação Millenium bcp, Departamento de Conservação e Restauro (DCR), Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (CIUHCT), Diamang Digital – Universidade de Coimbra, Diamang.com, Ephemera – Biblioteca e Arquivo de José Pacheco Pereira, Fundação Cupertino de Miranda, Herança de Amancio e Dorothy D’Alpoim Guedes, Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, Museu Bordalo Pinheiro, Portal Revistas de Ideias e Cultura, RTP Arquivos, Sociedade Martins Sarmento
Preço
4,00 eur / 3,00 eur c/desconto
Entrada gratuita: crianças até 12 anos / domingos de manhã, das 11h00 às 14h00
Curators
Mariana Pinto dos Santos
Marta Mestre
Partnership
IHA - Instituto de História da Arte, NOVA FCSH - Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa / IN2PAST – Laboratório Associado para a Investigação e Inovação em Património, Artes, Sustentabilidade e Território
Support
Fundação Millennium bcp
The IHA is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the projects UIDB/00417/2020 and UIDP/00417/2020, DOI 10.54499/UIDB/00417/2020 and 10.54499/UIDP/00417/2020. The Associated Laboratory IN2PAST is funded by FCT under ref. LA/P/0132/2020 (DOI 10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020).