View of the exhibition ‘A selection of works from CAM’s Collection by Leonor Antunes’, at the official residence of the Portuguese Ambassador in Madrid © Jorquera / Embajada de Portugal en España
A selection of works from CAM’s Collection by Leonor Antunes
Madrid, official residence of the Portuguese Ambassador
Visits on the 14th, 15th, 21st and 22nd March 2024 at 17:00, by booking in advance
The Portuguese Embassy in Madrid and the CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian present ‘A selection of works from CAM’s Collection by Leonor Antunes’, which puts forward a selection of works by women artists, planned according to their relationship with the space of the official residence of the Portuguese Ambassador in Madrid, and which opens its doors during ARCOMadrid, in the 3rd iteration of the Artists Join the Embassy project.
This display is a precursor to the exhibition that will inaugurate the new CAM building, dedicated to the artist Leonor Antunes. Entitled ‘da desigualdade constante dos dias de Leonor’ [the constant inequality of leonor’s days], in reference to an Ana Hatherly drawing belonging to the CAM Collection, the exhibition will present a new sculptural intervention by Leonor Antunes designed for the entire Main Gallery and a selection of works from the Collection. Through Leonor Antunes’ gaze, the CAM embarks on a new way of thinking of and exhibiting its collection, inviting artists to create new narratives from the works of art it preserves.
Continuing her own artistic practice, which she has developed around research and critical reflection on modernism ‘based on certain figures who were important and decisive during the post-war period, but who over the years were forgotten or marginalised’ (sic Leonor Antunes), Leonor Antunes selected a group of works by 14 women artists from the Collection, paying special attention to historically less valued materials and artistic practices. Rarely displayed or even forgotten, some of these works will be exhibited for the first time.
In Madrid, the architectural space of the official residence of the Portuguese Ambassador, simultaneously a space of domesticity and of official representation, dialogues with the works of Ana Hatherly, Ana Vieira, Helena Almeida, Isabel Carvalho, Isabel Laginhas, Lourdes de Castro, Lucia Nogueira and Salette Tavares, among others, proposing new associations and readings. Selected among the works to be presented in Lisbon, and enhancing the representation of some artists in the Collection, this group was mostly produced from the 1960s on and evokes links to language, to the earth, to home, to the space of collective representation. It features pieces materialised in the line/thread of writing, drawing, sewing, weaving, making and unmaking, using natural and organic materials (paper, fabric, horsehair, leather, wood, iron, stone, soil) or with recovered and obsolete objects brought together in assemblages that evoke the rural world, work and everyday home life.
The works suggest or call for experiences and aspirations, demands and fights, gestures of emancipation or the transformational movement of travel, as well as referring to places of forgetting and ongoing gender inequality.
Credits
Curator
Leonor Antunes
Artists
Ana Hatherly, Ana Vieira, Helena Almeida, Isabel Carvalho, Isabel Laginhas, Leonor Antunes, Lourdes Castro, Lúcia Nogueira, Luísa Cunha, Maria Antónia Siza, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Maria José Oliveira, Salette Tavares and Túlia Saldanha.