Talk with with Natsumi Aoyagi and Sayaka Mitome
Sanitary Fables
Event Slider
Date
- 18:00 / Cancelled 18:00 / Sold out Saturday, 18:00
Location
Studio Centro de Arte Moderna GulbenkianPricing
- Free admission
Subject to ticket collection 2 hours before the event. 2 tickets/person max. Online reservation with Cartão Gulbenkian is not available.
Artist Natsumi Aoyagi and curator Sayaka Mitome come together for a conversation about the project ‘Sanitary Fables’, in a session that also includes a screening of the film we will be presenting at the Studio.
The session begins with a screening of ‘Sanitary Fables – The Snail That Drank the Sea Dry, The Sewer That Is Neither, The Crow That Found a Washhouse’, a film by Natsumi Aoyagi, followed by a conversation between the artist and curator Sayaka Mitome.
The work lends its title to the exhibition and comprises three fables. It is also the piece that comes closest to the project’s conceptual core, exploring water as an element of both connection and separation, while questioning the boundaries between clean and dirty, pure and impure.
The artist and curator will discuss ‘Sanitary Fables’, Natsumi’s first solo exhibition in Portugal. The video installation follows the flows of Lisbon’s sewage and public hygiene systems and, through allegory and non-human perspectives, reflects on a form of sanitation that is often taken for granted. The work extends across several locations in the city, including public washhouses, and invites visitors to explore it with a map in hand.
The session will feature Japanese–Portuguese consecutive interpretation and Portuguese–English AI-assisted translation.
Participants
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Natsumi Aoyagi
Natsumi Aoyagi (Tokyo, 1990) lives and works in Tokyo. In 2016, she completed a master’s degree in New Media at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She develops projects grounded in research and fieldwork, exploring the possibilities of time-based media through observation, documentation, narrative and poetry. In 2022, she received the 28th Nakahara Chūya Prize for her poetry collection Sodatsu no wo Yameru, was nominated for the Women to Watch programme, and is a member of the artist collective ‘kohonya honkbooks’.
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Sayaka Mitome
Sayaka Mitome (1986) lives and works in Yamaguchi. She served as a curator at the Towada Art Center from 2016 to 2023, assuming her current position in 2024. Her research focuses on the relationships between sexuality and the classifications and divisions of gender shaped by androcentrism and modern values. She is interested in the intersections between curating and education, as well as the role of art museums operating beyond spheres of privilege, with a particular focus on regional museums and art institutions.
Programme
18:00 / Welcome
18:15 / Film screening
18:45 / Talk
Moderation
19:30 / Closing
Duration: 90 min
Credits
Main image
Natsumi Aoyagi, ‘Sanitary Fables – The Snail That Drank the Sea Dry, The Sewer That Is Neither, The Crow That Found a Washhouse’ © Courtesy of the artist
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