Umbigo, November 2022

At Kunstraum Botschaft, Berlin, the exhibition ‘da palavra ao desenho’ (vom Wort zur Zeichnung), which brings together Alice Geirinhas, Catarina Leitão, Gonçalo Barreiros, João Nora, João Pedro Vale, Rosana Ricalde, Susana Gaudêncio and Yonamine, was inaugurated on October 11. The exhibition, which ends on November 18, was curated by João Silvério and is the result of a collaboration between the PLMJ Foundation and the Camões Institute in Berlin.

The exhibition covers a range of shared dimensions, among them various forms of drawing and text. Between serigraphs, anagrams, or photographs (and even sculpture), the arrangement of the pieces seems to have been defined to increase the area of the gallery’s only room through the different voices and their directions. There is a strong focus on drawing as a form of text, narrative, but also on text as a form of drawing, as form in space.

Above all, surface is explored, the reduction of meaning to form. In the case of drawing, this script underlines its formal side and the notion of body as trace. But the same happens with the word: the presence of drawing, at first the opposite, takes it to the same place as the figure.

Salesman (2007), Gonçalo Barreiros’ sculpture, a material extension of drawing, is perhaps the clearest example of this polysemy. Remarkably close to Sem Título (2010) by Yonamine, serigraphy that uses newsprint as canvas, positioning the text as noise and graphic element. We also highlight Lisboa (2012, from the series Cidades Invisíveis), by Rosana Ricalde, a map of Lisbon made from cuttings of the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, allowing a ramification with two dimensions: when we get closer, we can follow the text without paying attention to the map; and, when we move away, the sentences are reduced to the form, expanding in space and outlining a city. The words are the place.

And, on the subject of place, we should also underline that the city of Berlin is not a mere coincidence. If the works also reveal how a story is drawn, Berlin is the ideal place for that to happen. It is a city imagined and perpetually redrawn from endless angles, above all for those who see it from the outside. Berlin has in itself the possibility of being several cities, eternally updated. And, during these days, the Kunstraum Botschaft takes part in it.

Originally written in Portuguese. Translated and published by Umbigo