Since the 1990s, Luisa Cunha (Lisbon, 1949) has developed an artistic practice that spans photography, drawing, video, performance and ‘sound texts,’ as she calls her sound installations. In these, word and voice, almost always her own voice, on a continual loop, are visually anchored in sculptural objects or analogue technological devices that are discreet and minimal. 

Presented in the Sound Room, ‘Senhora!’ facilitates a dialogue between the pieces in the Collection with a strong sound component and a programme open to contemporary artistic practices centred on sound. 

In this work we repeatedly hear the words: ‘Senhora! Toda a gente sabe’ [Madam! Everyone knows], a colloquial phrase – an ‘almost nothing’ of a possible everyday life.  Through the intonation, the artist stages the words, in an elegant exclamation that simultaneously and paradoxically gives it a familiar and enigmatic feel. The artist shares with us hidden, silenced evidence that bursts out and asserts itself in the repetition, as something public – everyone knows – eroding the boundaries between the personal and the public. In a melancholic but seductive voice, the artist questions us, demands our attention, involves us in a conversation we can no longer ignore.   

In the almost incantation-like repetition, silence gives way to an unease and disquiet that is contained and returned to us by the red of the speaker. With its strong political and sexual connotations, red is recurrent in Luisa Cunha’s works, reappearing in other works such as ‘Dirty Mind’ (1995), or more recently ‘Altura e Largura da Artista’ [Height and Width of the Artist], 2022.