What can Art do? – Ágora de Cá

On October 25, 2023, at 6:30 p.m., the first session of the new Ágora de Cá cycle took place at zet gallery, based on the question “What can art do?”. 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.

 

Based on the themes suggested by Délio Jasse’s solo exhibition, “Don’t tell your mother”, the first session of the “Ágora de Cá_What can art do?” cycle aims to launch a debate on how we see (or can see) contemporary art, as well as to reflect on the political commitments in which creators, and even exhibition and programming structures or institutions, are implicated. Can art repair – in its double sense of attention [a double entendre on the portuguese ver reparar] and care – inequalities in gender and ethnic representation, opening up spaces and times of visibility for non-male, white or heteronormative conditions? Can art rewrite history, by rememorizing the present and the future? Or is there nothing left but to repeat what has been established? What communication and mediation strategies can potencialize the involvement of multiple agents in their relationship (and sense of responsibility) with the growing concerns of the world we live in?

 

This first conversation challenges speakers Albertino Gonçalves, Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, Délio Jasse and Marta Bernardes to reflect on the theme “What can art do? REPAIR, REMEMORIZE, REPEAT?”, moderated by journalist Helena Teixeira da Silva.

 

 

Biographical notes

Albertino Gonçalves

Albertino Gonçalves has a degree in Sociology from the University of Paris V – Sorbonne (1981) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Minho (1994), where he joined the Sociology disciplinary group (2005). His work includes the publications Impactos Económicos e Sociais. Guimarães 2012 – Capital Europeia da Cultura [Economic and Social Impacts. Guimarães 2012 – European Capital of Culture] (with Rui Vieira de Castro, Francisco Carballo-Cruz, João Cerejeira and Luís Amaral, 2013); A Idade de ouro do postal ilustrado em Viana do Castelo (2011) [The Golden Age of the ilustrated postal in Viana do Castelo] e Vertigens. Para uma sociologia da perversidade (2009) [Vertigo. Towards a sociology of perversity]. Among other community outreach activities, he coordinated the evaluation of the cultural impact of Guimarães 2012 – European Capital of Culture, the creation of Espaço Memória e Fronteira [Memory and Frontier Space], in Melgaço and the Dar Vida às Letras [Give Life to Letter] Project, in the Intermunicipal Community of Vale do Minho, among others. He is the promoter of the Tendências do Imaginário blog page.

 

Bernardo Pinto de Almeida (PT, 1954)

Bernardo (Alberto Frey) Pinto de Almeida (Peso da Régua, 1954) is a poet and essayist whose work has been published in Portugal and abroad. Since 1974 he has been active in poetry, theory, historiography and criticism. He is a researcher and professor of art history and theory. From a close relationship with some of the main Portuguese artists of the second half of the 20th century, he has developed critical approaches to their works in complicity of creation, thus differentiating his from other critical discourses.

 

Délio Jasse (AO, 1980)

Délio Jasse was born in Angola in 1980 and, when he became an adult, he left his country in the middle of the civil war and came to Portugal to study art. His paternal great-grandfather was Portuguese and so were the generations that followed him.

However, his parents married at the end of the 1970s, after the Carnation Revolution and the end of the Colonial War, then facing a new post-colonial legislation that did not grant the spouse Portuguese nationality in these situations. When Délio arrived in Portugal at the end of the 1990s, he was considered illegal and his Portuguese citizenship was not recognized, which led to a long process of regularization as an immigrant and Portuguese citizen.

This lengthy process ended up dictating a number of impediments, such as applying for higher education, renting a house or having a bank account, involving the artist in a Kafkaesque process that lasted close to a decade, eventually becoming the motto for his artistic production, the cause and consequence of the research process he began at the time.

His artistic feats are based on collaborations with various screen printing studios and on exploring the possibilities of photography, not just as a technology or medium, but as a document that conceals/reveals a story.

 

Marta Bernardes (PT, 1983)

Marta Bernardes was born in Porto in 1983. She is a visual artist, writer and actress, as well as coordinator of the education and cultural mediation service of the museums and libraries of the City of Porto.

She has a degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, where she taught Fine Arts between 2010 and 2012.

She furthered her studies in visual arts and multimedia at the ESNBA in Paris and, in 2008, obtained a master’s degree in Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Culture from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid. She is currently working on a doctorate in Advanced Philosophy at the same institution. She was a member of the board of the educational service of the Spanish Abstract Art Museum in Cuenca, Spain, and a member of the exhibition coordination team at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid.

Since 2005, she has been presenting her plastic and audiovisual work to the public, as well as her performance and music pieces, both solo and in a collaborative and community way.

 

Helena Teixeira da Silva

Helena Teixeira da Silva is a journalist living in Porto. She began her career at the newspaper “Público” and, as she confesses, “inhabited” the newsroom of “Jornal de Notícias” for 21 years, working in the areas of Politics, Society and Culture. She collaborated with “Grande Reportagem” and “Notícias Magazine”. In 2022, she temporarily left daily journalism to develop other projects in the field of cultural journalism. She is the author of the book “751 dias – O tempo não consome a eternidade” [751 days – Time does not consume eternity], about Paulo Cunha e Silva.