BLACK BOARD

In the contemporary world, one cannot think of isolated places, particularly in a European context. Somehow, more or less directly, everything is interconnected, everything is related.
 In the Blackboard painting Mafalda Santos draws a complex diagram that represents the activities of PêSSEGOpráSEMANA, an independent space in Porto dedicated to the presentation of various events such as visual arts, performance and video, developed between 2002 and 2007 and managed by three artists, Mafalda Santos, André Sousa and Miguel Carneiro. This work portrays the genealogies and constellation that were generated and converged on that platform or through it.

 The structure is chronological and is developed through folders that emulate computer information systems. The metaphors that support the work are related to communication and the establishment of networks as a means of communicational (and even existential) survival. The conceptual structure becomes a fragile and intricate construction, in which the manuality of the drawing contrasts with the evoked rigor of a computer interface through iconographic appropriation.

 If, on the one hand, the work offers the story about a specific context (the history of PêSSEGOpráSEMANA that intersects with those of other spaces mainly in the city of Porto), on the other, it reflects on something that is transversal to the specificities of the context of Porto : on social structures of relationships. A diagram that is established in the exchange and sharing of information, and in the permeability of contemporary society.
 The story ends in 2005 with the exhibition where the painting participates. Blackboard presents an account of history that is both self-reflective and circular.

Text for the exhibition “Café Portugal”, Filipa Oliveira, 2009.