Metaformosas - Metaphormoses
Metaformosas was first exhibited in September, 2013, in Lisbon at Plataforma Revólver para a Arte Contemporânea and in July 2014, the work was at the group show Intermezzo #1 at MilaKunst, in Berlin.
http://www.transart.org/current-transart-exhibition-intermezzo-1/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mila-Kunstgalerie/1377368389167371
https://www.facebook.com/events/488238704643689/
http://www.artslant.com/ber/events/show/347182-intermezzo-1-the-international-transart-collective
The title Metaformosas is the product of the meeting of two words in Portuguese: metamorfose (metamorphosis) and formosura (beauty). Formosa (beautiful) is the feminine adjective describing a figure endowed with beauty. Thus, the work entitled Metaformosas addresses the beauty in the process of metamorphosis.
Some of the photographs and videos that appear to capture natural landscapes are in fact registers of the chaos of Rio de Janeiro city, as seen from a nearby highway. The presence of those small and delicate creatures in the middle of the gray concrete landscape was almost imperceptible.
In Metaphormoses, I record and share my encounters with the beauty inherent in metamorphosis and its movements. The photographs, films and installations I created under this title were inspired by the poetic imagery of the dream of the Taoist philosopher, Zhuang Zhou.
I was engrossed by the mix of wisdom and humour present in the zen and philosophical stories narrated by John Cage, and particularly captivated by Cage’s account of Zhuang Zhou’s dream. The Taoist philosopher once dreamt he was a butterfly, riding the wind across an open meadow. When he awoke, there was no wind, no meadow, and he had no wings. There was only a man asleep on a hard bed. He asked himself which was the dream, and which was reality. Am I a man dreaming of being a butterfly? Or a butterfly dreaming of being a man?
Just as a dream can present itself as a second reality, art is potentially a path to a profound individual transformation. The man and the butterfly symbolise life and art. When one answers to the other, it doesn’t matter which is the dream and which is reality.