Profanations
Profanations
Curator: David Revés
Profaning bodies and objects; profaning ideal images and glorifying edifices; profaning Time, profaning History. Stealing the title of Giorgio Agamben's book, Profanations calls for a constellating territory that sets in motion distinct ways of questioning certain mechanisms of power, structures of domination of bodies and minds, regimes of morality, domesticating habits, normalizing identities and immovable hierarchies, expected places and spaces.
At the same time, Profanations aims to critically evaluate some of the conditions of hyper-rationality and control that have driven the so-called Historical Progress, as well as much of its machinery of kinetic mobilization under which societies oriented themselves.
In this way, Profanations brings together gestures perceived as emancipatory forces in the face of devices of predication, rigidification and homogenization of the living experience, while it also summons up images, materialities and subjectivities that were continually rejected, lateralized, hidden or considered transgressive, dirty and dissident.
In Profanations we walk around artworks that lie between the transcendent, the telluric, the macabre and the visceral, presenting distinct proposals arose from a deep a dialogue with religion, witchcraft, esotericism, alchemy, ritualism, speculative fiction, ecology, feminist practices or queer subjectivities and materialities. Alongside these, we also find perspectives that aim for a more liberated and taboo-free relationship with sexuality, or with some stereotypes connoted with pornography.
Yet we may feel a latent sensation: the one that takes the Flesh, Matter, and Earth — and all their impulses, metamorphoses, passions, tumults, insidiousness, cycles of life and death — as powerful, radical, and absolute forces.
30 SEP 2023
– 14 JAN 2024
Free admission
OPENING (free entrance):
29 SEP, 10pm - 00am
OPENING HOURS:
TUE-SUN
1pm-6pm
The exhibition includes artworks displaying explicit sexual content, directly accessible to the audience. Admission of underage visitors is not allowed, except when accompanied by their guardians, and under their responsibility.
David Revés Biography
David Revés [1992, PT] is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based between Portugal and Sweden. He holds a Master's in Artistic Studies (Porto University) and a Post-graduation in Communication Sciences — Contemporary Cultures and New Technologies (NOVA University). He is the founder of METANOIA, a nomadic project that will develop a program of exhibitions, seminars, and periodical publications around extinction crises, and speculative languages, from 2024 on. As a curator, he has developed exhibition projects for several institutions, such as Alfaia, Loulé; Museu Municipal de Faro; DIDAC Foundation and Igrexa da Universidade, both in Santiago de Compostela; Casa da História Judaica, Elvas; and Galeria Uma Lulik__, Appleton, Fundação Leal Rios, Rua das Gaivotas 6, Fundação Arpad Szenes — Vieira da Silva, Galeria Liminare, Carpintarias de São Lázaro, or Casa do Capitão, all in Lisbon. He was chief curator and programmer at Galeria Painel, Porto, curator in residence at DIDAC Foundation, Santiago de Compostela, ES, and part of the curatorial team of CINENOVA — Interuniversity Film Festival. As a researcher/critic, he has worked with some Portuguese key institutions such as the National Museum Soares dos Reis, BoCA — Biennial of Contemporary Arts, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Centro de Arte Oliva, as well as with Centre d'art contemporain (cac) - Meymac, France. In 2022, he organized the residency project “Towards the Planetary” at Alfaia Association, Loulé, providing an encounter between artists, artisans, curators, and other authors under the theme of nature, culture, technology, and the Planetary. David regularly develops a critical and essayistic activity with which he collaborates for specialized magazines, artist books, scholarly editions, talks, and seminars. His texts have been published in DARDOmagazine [Spain], Floating Projects [China], ExibartMagazine [Italy], SUMAC Space [Middle East], and BoCA blog [Portugal]. He is a regular contributor to Contemporânea magazine [Portugal] since 2015.
Partnership
With works by: Albrecht Dürer, Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, António da Silva, Christine Henry, Foma Jaremtschuk, Francisca Sousa, Igor Jesus, Isabel Cordovil, Jol Thoms, Mariana Barrote, Mariana Gomes, Mauro Ventura, Odete, Paulo Serra, Pedreira, Pedro Moreira, Plastique Fantastique, Rasmus Myrup, Sonja Alhäuser.
