In the Azores, at a time when the earth trembles every day, the emergence of a new island is said to be imminent. The miracle of a new territory enables a new future despite the planet’s transformation at the hands of men, pushing us to the earth’s submersion, the end of the world and the absolute unknown. People live inside an uncontained beauty, a volcanic paradise raised by the overwhelming power of nature, magical and unforeseen.
Nature, people, traditions and history connect in a fascinating geography of power games. Earthquakes and volcanoes, sea that does not fail but does not forgive, winds, rain and mists that appear as threats to change a secure and recognizable world. People fear the death of the earth and its irreversibility, and in this, an identity matrix is defined that fights with the strength of its hands against instability, insecurity and the uncertainties of life and...elements.
Secular rituals unite communities in the practices of faith and belief to resist adversity and the unknown of Nature. Men and women begin with promises, cults, rites, praises and prayers to gods and places. They do this as a way to understand the world, as a way of interpreting the signs from above, as a way to endure the signs of the times.
Processions, empires, peregrinations, dancing, singing, the adoration of images found at sea – traditions of immersion and cult, redemption and protection, fear and punishment.
Epicentro: Milagre does not fit in the boundaries of what we know of natural laws, sliding,therefore, into faith, belief, delirium, imagination on the creation and destruction of nature and culture, the amazing divine, the tremor, the horror and “Let God’s will be done”. The exhibition looks at how the island’s specificity shapes a cultural identity, the “Azoreanity” in the image of Vitorino Nemésio, presenting artists whose works and researches incorporate the documentary, the fictional, the phantasmagoria or the call to immersion.
Artists that work with sound, photography, cinema and installation as creative process triggers and who were challenged to artist-in-residence programs, experimentation and research,thought and performance production, to create a plurality of perspectives on this natural and cultural territory.
These are visions from inside and outside, which now take over the ARQUIPÉLAGO as the epicenter for exhibition. They explore its dimensions of artistic creation and presentation, contributing to the reflection and confusion about what we think we know about the island where we stand, and create an incomplete set of miracles of the Azores that renews and expands a collection of contemporary art.
Curators
António Pedro Lopes, Joaquim Durães, Luís Banrezes, Márcio Laranjeira
Entrada actualizada el el 01 mar de 2021
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