Carla Rebelo (PRT), Francisco Vidal (ANG), Jorge Maciel (PRT), Márcio Carvalho (PRT), Sónia Godinho (PRT)
In an informal memory questionnaire carried out in 1980 by the American researchers Elizabeth and Geoffrey Loftus, 84% of the 169 scientists surveyed responded by believing that all lived events are permanently recorded unconsciously in our brain.
This study is the starting point of the exhibition Hypermnesia. This disturbance of memory is an abnormal processing condition of autobiographical memory. First identified by Clive Ballard (1913), but not considered as a mental phenomenon until the 1970s when Erdelyi and his team of researchers deepened their neurological studies. Complementary investigations have concluded that a patient with a diagnosis of hypermnesia sees their ability to interpret disabled. This situation disturbs the normal process of recording new experiences due to the constant updating of past events. A patient with this diagnosis does not have a present, much less manage to structure a thought about a future. It only recognizes the people who have lived and experienced past events with it.
The theme of memory is transversely applied by each of the six artists integrated in this curatorial project by Jorge Reis: Carla Rebelo, Francisco Vidal, Jorge Maciel, Márcio Carvalho and Sónia Godinho. The criterion that presided over the selection of the works that integrate this exhibition on hypermnesia, is supported in the idea of multidisciplinarity of the artistic praxis as tool of thought on the subject.
Each artist shows a singular concern inserted in the universe of memory that approaches the main theme: autobiographical, collective and historical memory, memory of the place, mystique, constructed, unconscious, and the memory of the object. Themes are expressed through drawing, sculpture, photography, installation, painting, video and sound. Carla Rebelo a video that appeals to the memory of space and the place where it arose. The artist resorts to the true facts of people who left traces and written accounts of their passage, but also of others that accompanied the emergence of that architecture now forgotten. Jorge Maciel presents an immersive site specific installation with elements of interaction that appeal to the visitor’s memory transporting him to lived moments, but also, for the recognition of some objects that compose it, in order to, in this way, appeal to their memory, framing them on a timeline. Francisco Vidal shows a series of paintings and drawings that portray 511 people who have crossed his career to this day. It is a work on autobiographical memory. Márcio Carvalho, resorts to the pursuit of a series of photographs that he calls involuntary memories. Carvalho presents an unprecedented approach in this series with the inclusion of new elements and new photographs. Sónia Godinho shows unpublished works of drawing that merit a longer contemplation by the complexity and the liquidification of the figures and spaces / places that it represents in the same plane.
This exhibition is also the reason for the inauguration of Underground Gallery 40, which intends to be a platform for the recognition of emerging art, especially Portuguese art. EMERGE – Cultural Association promotes emerging art, also responsible for the production of all public and private events held here.
In an art-science relationship, the exhibition program will have a series of public speaking sessions titled ‘Side by Side’ with neuroscientists who will join the participating artists for a meeting during the exhibition, where they will talk about the theme from the work they develop.