The Sylvan and Harsh North
What are the meteorological patterns, the myths and stories, the rhythms, colours and shapes, the human and nonhuman inhabitants that make up the Iberian Northwest, in its reality and fiction?
Wondering about the rituals and expressive modes of people, animals, plants, elements and minerals, we went looking for the roots, terminations and tentacles of the Iberian Northwest, trying to locate the places where they might reside. In doing so, we considered the past but above all faced the present-future of these concrete and imagined spaces between seas, woods and settlements.
Sylvan Harsh North is an exhibition that follows roads and lines of intensity, centrifugal forces that take us beyond Porto, towards those supposed margins where permutations erupt, to discover and share the references, stories, words and connections to these places with a long past and an even longer future.
With the participation of Alejandra Pombo Su, Cem Raios T’abram, Daniel Moreira e Rita Castro Neves, Diego Vites, Judith Adataberna, Lara and Noa Castro Lema, Lois Patiño, Mariana Barrote, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, Maruja Mallo, Óliver Laxe, Salvador Cidrás, Vicente Blanco and Von Calhau!
Curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso.
Design: Bartlebooth
Design: Bartlebooth
Saturday, December 9th at 4pm
Opening: Norte Silvestre Agreste
Here are some images from the exhibition project that opened last Saturday! Sylvan and Harsh North brings together works by more than 15 artists who materialise and map out a wide range of practices: from sculpture, to painting, installation, video and drawing, the project also presents a public programme of performances, video projections and guided tours.
This was the Galeria Municipal's last exhibition of 2023. Sylvan Harsh North is a project curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso featuring the participation of Alejandra Pombo Su, Cem Raios T’abram, Daniel Moreira e Rita Castro Neves, Diego Vites, Judith Adataberna, Lara and Noa Castro Lema, Lois Patiño, Mariana Barrote, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, Maruja Mallo, Óliver Laxe, Salvador Cidrás, Vicente Blanco and Von Calhau!
To visit until March 10, 2024.
This was the Galeria Municipal's last exhibition of 2023. Sylvan Harsh North is a project curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso featuring the participation of Alejandra Pombo Su, Cem Raios T’abram, Daniel Moreira e Rita Castro Neves, Diego Vites, Judith Adataberna, Lara and Noa Castro Lema, Lois Patiño, Mariana Barrote, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, Maruja Mallo, Óliver Laxe, Salvador Cidrás, Vicente Blanco and Von Calhau!
To visit until March 10, 2024.
Saturday, December 9th at 5pm
The Sylvan and Harsh North: Performance by Mouræ (Lois Búa)
Crónica da Cabria is the title of Mouræ's performance, which materialises through a sound collage of different origins, reflecting the links between fantasy and reality, future and past, while pondering the possible conflicts of its idealisation.
Based on sound recordings of trades and labours that are gradually disappearing, remixed with sounds from the present, Mouræ follows the reverse journey of the conger eel, which is dried in Cábrias de Muxia (Galicia) and marketed in Calatayud (Castile).
This session was presented in direct relation to the installation by the artist Diego Vites, part of this exhibition.
Saturday, December 9th at 6pm
The Sylvan and Harsh North: Performance by Lara & Noa Castro Lema
"Birds die and sing once again in favour of poetry. Women are transmuted into birds. The voice has the power to transform beings, for better or for worse."
Galician artist duo Lara & Noa Castro Lema presented the performance A las aves, meu amigo, centred on oral tradition and the logics of sharing knowledge through story, music and memory. Their research has investigated these practices through the voice, crossing human and animal sonorities to think about the possibilities of fantasy and connection with the world.
This two-voice performance focused on the myth of the extinct Aurochs and the endangered Capercaillie. The moment accompanies the film that the duo is presenting at the exhibition.
Thursday, February 8, at 7pm
The Sylvan and Harsh North: Film programme – Day 1
Lañar, 2023
Diego Vites
16mm B/W film, transferred to video without sound | 03'
The conger eel, also called safio in Portugal, is an eel whose grayish body, long and without scales, can reach more than two meters. In the film Lañar, the artist Diego Vites presents a brief visual essay documenting the activity of preparing, of "lanhar" the conger eel before it is dried in the cabrias of Muxia, the last drying structures for this animal on the Galician coast.
What looks at me surroundings me, 2023
Alejandra Pombo Su
HD video, color, sound | 26' 10''
"The representation of animals based on identification is one that promotes an empathetic relationship, but animals cross paths with us and we live with them, which has nothing to do with identification, but rather with the ability to embrace other ways of relating to the world and approach this relationship with the animal being from its impossibility". — Alejandra Pombo Su
Sempre se encontra consolo, 2022
Noa and Lara Castro Lema
HD video, color, sound | 28'50''
Noa and Lara Castro Lema's films are about fables, memories, landscapes and dreams. In Sempre se encontra consolo, the artists explore the relationship between work and rest, gender determinism and the multiple analogies that define human and non-human connections. Songs, stories and prophecies are vehicles of memory, "dreams in which the past has been transformed, sublimated, reduced and expanded into voices, leading us to irrational emotions".
Avesso, 2011
Von Calhau!
16mm film transferred to video, color, sound | 19' 15''
Collection of the Serralves Foundation - Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto. Acquisition in 2012. Work developed as part of the 2011 edition of the Sonae|Serralves Project. Acquisition in 2012.
Von Calhau!, an artistic duo formed by Marta Ângela and João Alves, combine music, performance, installation, graphic arts and film. Avesso takes place in a telluric environment, where two figures—the leopard and leprosy—exist and move beyond the sphere of the human and coexist in umbilical dependence.
Na vibración da auga, 2012
Lois Patiño
HD video, color, sound | 4'
Na vibración da auga belongs to the diptych Na vibración. The other half, Na vibración da terra, focuses on the movements and energy released by the earth in volcanic zones. Na vibración da auga explores the space of a large waterfall, where we observe the fall of water in its different reactions to light. Always from a contemplative and poetic perspective.
El Espectrorium, 2016-17
Judith Adataberna
Digital video, color, sound | 13'
A floral system of bright colors and an animal gaze introduce another visual spectrum and play with the variability of scales. The polarized light of crustaceans, the ultraviolet light of bees or the thermal light of reptiles inspire us to question the veracity with which we assess reality. Light and shadow shape a world of wild forms that wants to transport us to the "other world", the realm of spectres, where in death, like moths, we are attracted to light. — Judith Adataberna
O futuro é das cabras, 2021
Óliver Laxe
HD video, color, sound | 30'
Óliver Laxe brings us closer to his most immediate world: the village of Vilela, in Galicia, where he builds his life project while reflecting on spirituality, simplicity and the symbolic—the territory where the future is rooted. The return to the primary sector is a metaphor for how to care for the landscape and allow yourself to be cared for by it.
Domesticar há milénios, 2019
Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela
16mm film transferred to video, color, sound | 6'
A child kneads bread dough with an elementary softness. There is a transfer between the primary food and its allegorical nature. Association between the ferocious appearance of the beings sculpted on the capitals of a church and their childlike expression. Shapeless worn stone and mysterious iconography, the similarity between figures made of bread and stone. — Mariana Caló e Francisco Queimadela
Thauma Idesthai, 2020
Mariana Barrote and Alexandre Mota
HD video, color, sound | 03'35''
A hybrid figure, with ocelli and extensions, inhabits a narrative interspersed with drawings and gestures. With her body hidden, she reveals her activity by drawing, manipulating objects and caressing, thus constructing a space of invention and capturing our gaze through the power of mimicry.
Friday, February 9, at 7pm
The Sylvan and Harsh North: Film programme – Day 2
Tatuado nos ollos levamos o pouso, 2022
Diana Toucedo
HD DCP 5.1, color, sound | 26'
"The shellfish gatherers of a small village in the south of Galicia work hard every day of the tide to sow, dig and care for the threshold between the sea water and the sand. This space for cultivating a precious fruit is also a relational space that unites them collectively, opening up the possibility of emotional, moral, feminine and affective support and a working conscience." — Diana Toucedo
Dildotectonics, 2023
Tomás Paula Marques
16 mm film transferred to video, color, sound | 16'
In the present, Rebeca is trying to create a collection of ceramic dildos, as an alternative to the archetypal phalluses. Centuries earlier, Josefa had found a curious object that became part of their illicit love affairs. Separated by centuries of history, Josefa and Rebeca's paths eventually cross.
Acariño Galaico (De Barro), 1961-1995
José Val del Omar
35 mm film transferred to video, b/w, sound | 24'
Reconstructed in 1995 by the artist Javier Codesal from José Val del Omar's incomplete montage, Acariño Galaico (De Barro) is one of the films in the Tríptico elemental de España, José Val del Omar's last cinematographic work. In this unfinished portrait of Galicia, the filmmaker combines images of clay sculptures with documentation of the region's landscapes, religious rituals and cultural traditions.
Amarillo Atlántico, 2022
Carla Andrade
Super 8mm film transferred to video, color, sound | 14'09''
"Amarillo Atlántico is the name of a unique variety of granite from the Sierra de la Groba, located along the southernmost coast of Galicia, where the Sumerian culture's initiation paths pass. Due to its richness and lack of knowledge, it constitutes a great stone book where ancestral wisdom and powerful cosmo-telluric forces are hidden, which have remained in the cultural process as residues of the rustic, resisting the orthodoxy-idolatry divide." — Carla Andrade
As vacas de Wisconsin, 2016
Sara Traba
HD movie, color, sound | 16'
In a small Galician village, a grandmother lives with her cow, who no longer gives milk. One day, in the village store, she hears on television that the University of Wisconsin has discovered that cows give more milk if they listen to symphonic music. From then on, the grandmother's adventure in search of classical music for her cow begins.
Saturday, March 9th at 6pm
The Sylvan and Harsh North: Performance by Alejandra Pombo Su - Toda carne
Alejandra Pombo Su's artistic practice moves between the visual, audiovisual and performing arts. Based on dreamlike visions and imaginings, her works represent emotions and imagined figurations as much as concrete people, animals and places, exploring the relationship between the feminine and the animal, the natural and the sensory, the unforeseen, the ineffable and the imagined.
In the performance which will mark the closing of the exhibition, the artist will explore the animal presence through the modulation, vibration and intensity of the voice, as a body that detaches itself from its skin and connects to a non-corporeal, open and undefined place.