Sombra ao sol
[shadow in the sun]
2023

Joana Patrão + Lourdes Castro

part of Ciclo TÊTE-À-TÊTE

curated by Frederico Portas and Tomás Agostinho

Galeria Hélder Alfaiate, Ericeira

0 - Sombra ao sol (2023) - Joana Patrao - vista de exposicao - centro - 3.jpg

Sombra ao sol: pequeno herbário das sombras 2023

Exhibition view: Sombra ao sol (2023), Joana Patrão featuring artworks by Lourdes Castro, curated by Frederico Portas and Tomás Agostinho,

part of the exhibition program TÊTE-À-TÊTE at Galeria Hélder Alfaiate, Ericeira

Sombra ao sol marks the fifth moment of the TÊTE-À-TÊTE cycle, curated by Frederico Portas and Tomás Agostinho and design and communication by Patrícia de Almeida Gomes. Ir features four works by the artist Lourdes Castro, from the gallery's collection and private collections, and a set of original works that Joana Patrão developed with the aim of reinterpreting the creative possibilities opened up by Lourdes Castro's repertoire.

This exhibition intends to stage a dialogue — or a tête-à-tête — that takes as its starting point the Grand Herbier d'Ombres (1972), Lourdes Castro's shadow herbarium — undoubtedly inspired by Anna Atkins (botanist and photographer), considered the first woman to publish a book illustrated with photographic images, with her Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1853). Joana Patrão adds to the list of references the poet Emily Dickinson, with her own Herbarium (1839-1846) and her botanical poems, thus continuing the legacy started by great women artists of exaltation of Nature through the documentary record and mapping of her surrounding environment or the garden they inhabit.

In this sense, the artist presents a series of seven pictorial works guided by this look, crossing an almost scientific record of botanical species with the use of photograms. And a video, a "shadow theater", a study on the small unexpected phenomena of everyday life, which go unnoticed in the daily glare. These multimedia herbaria call for observation and amazement at "things of no importance" and propose to reconcile Nature's Time (slow on the one hand, fleeting on the other) with the presence of the human body.

[excerpts of the Press Release]

read the curatorial text