The work of René Tavares moves comfortably between fiction, orality, and memory to comment with humour and irony on the processes of construction of what we understand as History, culture, and heritage, and which we validate as such. At the same time, it speculates on alternative narratives to what the past was and to what the future might be. Comprising two painting-sculptures ("Carruagem lusa" [Portuguese carriage] and "Pía mú / Olha p’ra mim / Look at me"), and one painting-projection ("Wash station"), the project entitled "Estado Novo do Atlântico" [new state of the Atlantic] is positioned as a visual constellation of forces and energies in collision. This project provides continuity with the bodies of work Atlantic Nation and In Memory We Trust, and confronts us with gestures, words, (post-)colonial (hi)stories, and languages that are situated between the past, the present, and the future, between Africa and Portugal. With this transculturality and transhistoricity of encounters, Estado Novo do Atlântico exposes the planetary scale of conflicts that determine much of what shapes human identities. — Luísa Santos
maat Lisbon - New Artists Award 2022: René Tavares
René Tavares
November 24, 2022
