In the context of the exhibition Gris, Vide, Cris, which brings together the works of Alberto Giacometti and various sculptures by Rui Chafes, the CAM invited the duo of artists and choreographers Sofia Dias and Vitor Roriz to devise a new work proposing a ‘vanishing point’ for the experience of the exhibition space. 

This project focuses on unlikely encounters, where the word, time and the tension of the bodies are linked to concepts of immateriality, atemporality and representation of the invisible.

How can the invisible be made visible or captured in an instant? A series of actions of variable duration take place in the hall shared by the exhibition galleries and conference rooms. Some of these actions inhabit the periphery of the space and invite the audience to draw closer, almost intimately, to the performers’ bodies, while others appropriate and take the place by storm, filling it with voices, echoes, gestures and movements. Each action is an invitation to a different mode of relationship between the audience, the performers and the space, an attempt to anticipate or prolong the sensation of deceleration, inclination and unpredictability evoked by the exhibition itself.

These are actions of variable duration that prolong the movement of deceleration, the ‘inclination,’ unpredictability and almost solitude that some of the works by Rui Chafes – and the architecture of the room itself – suggest to visitors to the exhibition Gris, Vide, Cris. Perhaps the bodies function as an antechamber here, preparing for or prolonging visitors’ experience of the exhibition.

Photo © Filipe Ferreira