31 Jan, 2024
What can Art do?_Ágora de Cá | Reunite, Reallocate, Redistribute?
On January 31, 2024, at 6:30 p.m., the second session of the Ágora de Cá cycle, from the series “What can Art do?” took place at zet gallery, with the sub-theme “Reunite, Reallocate, Redistribute?” and a debate on the role of community art in this area. The session, moderated by journalist Abel Coentrão, had as speakers researcher Josep Maria Aragay Borràs; Hugo Cruz, playwright and art curator; Gabriela Gomes, coordinator of the Gulbenkian-funded community art project “Por um galho”; sociologist and Passeio collaborator Teresa Mora; and artist Sandra Baía.
The project is organized by zet gallery in partnership with Passeio, with the support of dstgroup and the Centre for Communication and Society Studies (CECS) at the University of Minho.
Biographical notes
Researcher/professor and coordinator of community art projects. He lives in Barcelona.
He is responsible for the “Basket Beat” project and the Community Arts Festival of Catalonia (FAACCC).
“’Basket Beat’ is a proposal that, since 2009, has accompanied and discussed educational, social, communitarian and political processes through group music and basketballs, responding to what is known as community music. The workshop is an educational, collective, corporeal and artistic activity in which a space is created for new forms of social relationship through different group dynamics and musical experiences which, at the same time, are the instrument for generating situations, dialogues, learning and questioning around the world we build together.”
He is the author of the book “Community arts from social education. The Basket Beat experience.”
HUGO CRUZ
He has a PhD from the University of Porto on “Community Artistic Practices and Civic and Political Participation: experiences of theater groups in Brazil and Portugal”; a postgraduate degree in Social Theater and Socio-Educational Intervention from the Ramon Llull University (Barcelona) and has been trained in dramaturgy at the Académie Internationale des Arts du Spectacle (Paris), Centro Teatro do Oprimido (Rio de Janeiro) and Odin Teatret (Denmark). He publishes and teaches nationally and internationally in the areas of “artistic creation and public space”, “artistic practices and participation”, “art and community” and “cultural policies”. He is a guest lecturer at the School of Arts of the University of Évora and a researcher at CIIE-University of Porto and CHAIA-University of Évora. He coordinated the books “Arte e Comunidade” (Art and Community) (2015), “Arte e Esperança” (Art and Hope) (2019), “Arte, Reinvenção e Futuros” (Art, Reinvention and Futures) (2023), published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and authored “Práticas Artísticas, Participação e Política” (Artistic Practices, Participation and Politics), published in Portugal (2021), Brazil (2022), Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and Chile (2023). He is a member of the external evaluation team of the PARTIS / Art for Change Initiative – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation / BPI Foundation / La Caixa. He was the artistic director of MEXE – International Meeting of Art and Community and Imaginarius Festival, among other curatorial projects, and of various theatrical projects in co-construction with local communities, mainly in Portugal, Spain and Brazil. He develops consultancy and training in different areas – municipalities, festivals and foundations (e.g. Festival de las Arts Comunitàries de Catalunya, Braga 2027 European Capital of Culture Candidature). He is co-founder of MEXE, Pele, Núcleo do Teatro do Oprimido do Porto and Nómada – Art & Public Space.
GABRIELA GOMES
She is the coordinator of the Gulbenkian-funded community art project “Por um galho”, a project with an ecological and social dimension that involves local communities and integrates the visual arts.
Contributor to Passeio. Sociologist. In 2007, she completed her PhD in sociology at the University of Minho, where she is currently a lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences.
She has worked on topics such as social theory and social utopias; collaborative practices between art, science and philosophy; artistic practices of participation and social intervention.
She has done research on art and culture and knows some of the community art projects and artists in Portugal well, having collaborated, at different levels, with Hugo Cruz and Tiago Porteiro – (Theater, ELACH UMinho) and Manuela Ferreira.
SANDRA BAÍA
Sandra Baía, artist, presents the exhibition “Cicatriz.” at zet gallery.
Born in Portugal in 1968, after a childhood spent in Africa, she returned to the country to study at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon (1999). He still lives in the capital, where he also has his studio.
In her work, she aims to explore the interaction between observers and the works he creates, obtaining not only a reflection on the work, but also a reflection on ourselves in that instance. In her career as an artist, she began her career in painting and later moved on to sculpture and installation.
With a slight fascination for architecture, Sandra Baía explores the capabilities of materials in order to be able to shape them and add to her artistic creation. Although she uses industrial, heavier and harder materials, her aim is to soften the material. Sometimes we can find the exploration of the “Word” in her work, reinterpreting and giving varied characteristics to her works.
ABEL COENTRÃO
Moderator of this conversation.
Born in Caxinas, Vila do Conde, in 1973.
He graduated in Social Communication from the University of Minho, Braga, in 1998.
He is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Regional and Urban Planning at the University of Aveiro.
A journalist since 1999, he works in a wide range of areas such as urban planning, mobility, the environment and regional development.
After 20 years as a journalist for PÚBLICO, he left the newspaper in May 2022. However, he continues to collaborate with some articles on his specialized subjects – cities, urban mobility, sustainable development.
He has developed other editorial projects in the area of maritime culture with Bind’ó Peixe – Associação Cultural, an organization that develops projects to safeguard and enhance maritime culture in this and other municipalities in the north of Portugal.
He has a long-standing interest in the fishing communities of Caxinas, with a forthcoming book on the subject and a profile as a former journalist for Público, where he worked for many years, although he currently remains a contributor.
