ORANGE – Isabel Ribeiro and Ângelo Ferreira de Sousa
October 1 – 15 2016
Mixed media installation
The exhibition’s title refers to the color of the prison uniforms in the United States (especially in Guantanamo), on the hostage-clothes of the victims of Daesh and the „life jackets“ of refugees crossing the Mediterranean every day.
Works
1. Orange (Acrylic on fabric, ventilator)
Three variations on the subject of the „rescue vests“ that are left on the beaches of the Greek islands after use. Pixellation – like an incorrect focus – works like a media censorship mercifully hiding shocking pictures to the spectators.
2. Orange (Video 4’39)
We have learned about the life story of an African who tried to come to Europe in a so-called illegal way and swam through the Strait of Gibraltar. To help himself, he built a kind of buoy of empty water bottles. The sound of the video is unpleasant, aggressive, rough. The figure never manages to make the kite soar. The bottles were neither made for flying nor to save economic shipwrecked. The man we met in Morocco has managed to cross the canal, but was caught by the Spanish police on arrival. He waited for the summer to try again. The video also has three acts – three attempts – but only a cheap film trick can help to reach the goal.
3. Orange (Photograph found on the internet and manipulated)
To what extent should one believe the media images? The so-called „photojournalism“? Where does the verisimilitude of war depiction end? And the war itself?
Information in German and Portuguese
Isabel Ribeiro
Covilhã, Portugal, 1976, lives and works between Porto and Lisbon.
The artist, who started exhibiting in 2001, is interested in the diversity of anxieties generated in modernity that have to do with a failure of the individual with his environment: the individual and the collective crisis, the conflict between the individual and the social, transformations of space, forces of change, the constant failure of the movements that advocate change, the loneliness of the fight, dilemmas and the longevity of the community, unemployment, loneliness and tedium. Isabel Ribeiro is also connected to the foundation of Salão Olímpico and Projecto Apêndice, two of the artist-run spaces that arouse in Porto, in the last years.
Ângelo Ferreira de Sousa
Porto, Portugal, 1975, lives and works between Paris, Barcelona and Porto.
During and after his studies in Fine Arts, he got involved in various actions, exhibitions, site-specific projects, videos and performances, most of the time with a socio-politic (or poetic-politic?) spirit and following these mainlines: direct action, visual poetry and technical reproduction, which make easier large scale public interventions. Performances in public space (often filmed with hidden camera), collaborative projects with other artists, chalk drawings, etc. Fast and ephemeral actions that create a space where the artistic and the politic are part of the same mechanism of production and circulation.
The artist co-founded Caldeira 213, an artist-run space in Porto. He was also artist in residence at Hangar (Barcelona), Triangle (Marseille), Duende Studios (Rotterdam) and The Window (Paris).