Pretérito perfecto. Ângela Ferreira, Grada Kilomba y Rogelio López Cuenca.
The exhibition Pretérito Perfecto aims towards generating an encounter between the current moment and its preludes in the past.
The artists that compose the exhibition share an understanding of art as a critical tool for research: Ângela Ferreira, Grada Kilomba and Rogelio López Cuenca, from different countries and alluding to different contexts, develop artistic practices that meet and resonate among themselves, and in which they explore and reflect on several moments of History. Throughout their respective careers, these artists have worked on colonialism, states of exception, silencing and other issues structurally encrusted in our societies and, with their counter-hegemonic gaze, keep on pushing the boundaries of the established discourses. The work on memory they carry out on perceiving the past as a moment of time in constant revision, generates disruptive forms and opens to diverse formalizations that contribute to new possibilities of seeing and understanding the world today.
Hence, in this exhibition, several time layers: the reference to Spain’s recent past through the non-fictional, the reinterpretation of fouding classics of European culture or the hommage to different figures or utopian episodes of the 20th Century History in Portugal, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries.
Pretérito Perfecto [Past Perfect] is, therefore, a title charged with irony, that questions our relation with History and implies that we rely on its critical study to shed light on past episodes and its consequnces in the present.
Bruno Leitão, curator of Pretérito Perfecto
Ângela Ferreira (Maputo, 1958), her artistic practice is focused in the analisis of consequences from colonialism and postcolonialism in the contemporary world: a research scope where identity and the configuration of a modern movement play a central role in contexts subdued to a colonial past.
Grada Kilomba (Lisbon, 1968) is an interdisciplinary artist know for her work centered on the examination of memory, trauma, gender, racism and postcolonialism. Her work is realized in different formats, from texts, stage reading and acting, until videos, theatrical installations, in what she entitles ‘Performing Knowledge’.
The works of Rogelio López Cuenca (Nerja, 1959) abounds on language, mass media, migration crises, historic memory and, in general, power dynamics in current society. At the exhibiton, the artworks presented are co-produced with Elo Vega (Huelva, 1965).
ONLINE GUIDED TOUR WITH THE CURATOR, BRUNO LEITÃO
PAST PERFECT TALKS: Ângela Ferreira and Bruno Leitão (in English)
PAST PERFECT TALKS: Rogelio López Cuenca y Bruno Leitão (in Spanish)
PAST PERFECT TALKS: Grada Kilomba and Bruno Leitão (in English)
VIRTUAL TOUR HERE