SE OS MEUS OLHOS ME AFOGASSEM • Bárbara Fonte
SE OS MEUS OLHOS ME AFOGASSEM
Bárbara Fonte (PT)
11 September
7:30 pm
30 minutes
[Performance]
Ferro, CRL – Central Elétrica
When there is no longer any salvation, the body tries to create it. Perhaps that is the condition that underpins this performance. Not the search for redemption or relief, but the need to construct, through the body itself, a possibility of escape. The action arises from this helplessness. When nothing external responds, the body seeks to act as its own annihilator. It demands endurance, repetition, effort, and wear and tear, but the body is comforted by a simple idea: to build a place where it can experience a form of existence in absence. Vulnerability and exhaustion do not appear as fragility, but as a condition that allows the body to draw closer to that which remains inaccessible to it. Crying ceases to be an expression of sadness and becomes work. When transcendence no longer exists, the body creates its own miracles. As the bathtub fills, the body plunges into it repeatedly. The body has built a place for disappearance. The action does not prove that this place exists. It merely seeks to create the conditions so that its possibility may be experienced.
Artistic Info
Concept and performance: Bárbara Fonte
Assistance: António Machado
Bio
Bárbara Fonte (1981, Braga) is a visual artist, with a degree in Fine Arts – Painting and a postgraduate degree in Theory and Practice of Drawing from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. Her artistic practice is multidisciplinary, bringing together visual arts, performance, and drawing. Her work takes the form of an intimate performance that explores symbolic language, intertwining personal, cultural, political, and religious dimensions. She has participated in exhibitions and projects nationally and internationally, in Portugal, Spain, France, England, and Brazil. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and presented performances at institutions and festivals in Portugal and abroad.
