Carolina Grau /Curator
Mauro Cerqueira: Terra Incógnita
at Arquipelago Centro de Artes Contemporaneas, São Miguel Island, Azores (Summer 2017)
Terra Incognita is an exhibition where contemporary artists explore the different “territories” of the Azores with a 21st century gaze. This archipelago is described by the European Union as an “ultra-peripheral region,” it remains unknown although it belongs to the western civilization. Throughout its history, it has always been a point of passage, so much for the ships of the colonial times as for the transatlantic cruises of today. The artists were invited to investigate the physical, the imaginary, the cultural, the political, the social and the botanical geography of this microcosm.
Mauro Cerqueira compiles images and daily use objects from places undergoing urban transformations, places where people are subjected to economic and social pressures. During his stay in Terceira, he travelled the island assimilating its idyllic landscape while reading The Poems of Konstantinos Kavafis. Between the accident and tradition, his work is based on violent and separate narrative drawings, depicting dismembered bodies that confront us with our human fragility.
This work by Cerqueira consists of a number of cardboard columns, on which the artist drew with pinpoint pen. Drawings of fragmented bodies, tears, blood, chains, knifes and so on remind the viewer of an inner decay, of an ongoing struggle with the self - portrayed as a nude and obscene victim.
This work by Cerqueira consists of a number of cardboard columns, on which the artist drew with pinpoint pen. Drawings of fragmented bodies, tears, blood, chains, knifes and so on remind the viewer of an inner decay, of an ongoing struggle with the self - portrayed as a nude and obscene victim.