Joana Vasconcelos and Cesariny in the new MAAT exhibitions

The exhibition "Plug-in. Joana Vasconcelos", which will include "Tree of Life", and "The Surrealist Castle" by Mário Cesariny are among the exhibitions that open from September 29th at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), in Lisbon.

The new exhibition of Joana Vasconcelos will be the first to open, bringing together a set of pieces by the artist, followed by, on October 5th, the museum's anniversary date, the one dedicated to Cesariny, and also, "Family Album. Works from the Carmona e Costa Foundation Collection" , and "Ciclóptico. Paulo Lisboa", indicated to Lusa the source of the MAAT communication.

The "Tree of Life" - a 13-meter structure, representing the emotions experienced in confinement, with the expectation of a more harmonious new beginning - was installed in the Chapel of Vincennes Castle, in Paris, in April this year.
Initially designed for Villa Borghese, in Rome, which did not come to fruition due to the pandemic, "Tree of Life" was born from the work done during that period. The team of Joana Vasconcelos She was confined at home to embroider the leaves of the tree that would become dedicated to life, associated with the idea of a new beginning, explained the artist in an interview with the Lusa agency, last April, in Paris.
The work, inspired by the myth of Daphne - in which the first love of the god Apollo, from Greek mythology, rejects him, and asks her father to help her escape, ending up turning her into a laurel tree - was designed for the Cross Season between Portugal and France, initially scheduled for 2021.

"It was something produced in the middle of the pandemic, from recycling materials and fabrics that were in the studio. It was the occupation of many people for many months and was the focus of emotions - even despair and anxiety - and the question 'what will happen? the future?'. All these emotions are part of this project. I told the team and myself that I had to do something positive and fantastic to celebrate the end of that period", explained the artist, before the opening in Paris.

Joana Vasconcelos created a "luxurious and sensual tree" in shades of red, brown and gold, with an intricate fabric trunk, using various artisanal techniques with wool and other materials, which then spreads in the canopy in dozens of branches that host around 140 thousand leaves, some with Castelo Branco embroidery, others covered in sequins, and even leather leaves, where thousands of LED lights were installed.
This work should have been inaugurated in September 2022, in order to close the Crusade Season between France and Portugal, but due to technical problems, the opening was postponed until April, to the Vincennes Castle Chapel, in Paris, and will come to September 29th for the museum next to the Tagus, in Lisbon
On October 5th - the date of MAAT's seventh anniversary - the museum will open three new exhibitions: in the year of the centenary of the birth of Mário Cesariny, the figure of Portuguese Surrealism will be celebrated, in an exhibition curated by João Pinharanda and co-curated by Afonso Dias Ramos and Marlene de Oliveira.

“Not restricted to a monographic exhibition, this exhibition explores the sources that fed the creativity of the artist and poet, as well as other paths that accompanied him, searching in national and international creation the genealogy that, for himself, and for the Portuguese surrealism, Cesariny invented”, says a text about the MAAT 2023 program.
Recovering the title of the work he dedicated to the work of the artist couple Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szénes, the exhibition will count on the collaboration of entities such as the Cupertino de Miranda Foundation, in Famalicão, which holds the majority of Cesariny's estate, and will integrate a set of complementary activities and publications.

On the same date, curated by João Pinharanda and Manuel Costa Cabral, the exhibition that presents the Carmona e Costa Collection, brought together by Maria da Graça Carmona e Costa - one of the largest private patrons in the country - over 50 years, will inaugurate. but it was never shown in a systematic way.
This exhibition, entitled "Family Album - Works from the Fundação Carmona e Costa Collection", aims to give an account of the collector's taste and a significant part of the history of Portuguese art in recent decades, explaining the way in which Maria da Graça Carmona e Costa intervened in it. , through the two institutions he created: the Giefarte gallery and the foundation in his name.

Paulo Lisboa, and his plastic research will be the subject of another exhibition - "Ciclóptico" -, to open at the same time, in the Cinzeiro 8 room, with drawings, objects and projections that pose essential questions related to the technical practice of drawing and the faculty of vision.
In this exhibition, the artist born in Lisbon in 1977 - who studied fine arts and painting at the Escola Superior de Tecnologias of the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar - presents recent works, in which he deepens his lines of work, on light and its absence.
Paulo Lisboa held, among others, the solo exhibition "A skeleton enters the bar...", at Fundação Leal Rios, in Lisbon (2020), and participated in the collective "I often arranged to meet myself at point zero", at Atelier -Museum Júlio Pomar, in Lisbon (2019).

Source: Lusa