In 2013 I won a scholarship from the University of Rennes II to develop a postdoctoral project. It was a period of great loneliness. Isolated, I lived on the outskirts and, in the six months I spent there, my homesickness led me to produce two postcards, which I initially called postcards from the suburbs, but which, upon returning to Portugal, I renamed love letters4. The difference in title corresponds to a difference in context (place) and the language in which the texts were and are written, initially in French and later in Portuguese. It quickly became clear that these postcards were another means of exploring the interest in multiple and diverse forms of publishing (namely artists’ books). In Rennes, I had the opportunity to delve into the collection of the Cabinet du Livre d’Artista and delve deeper into my research on conceptual artists, especially the Fluxus movement, who used all kinds of modest media, combining text and image. As Ian Hamilton Finlay explains, for these artists, “As an opportunity to express a poetic idea, each postcard is considered as seriously as a book, a sculpture or gallery installation” (COOPER, 2019, p. 7, our translation). (…) The images (barely edited) are photographs of what I see from the windows or doors of spaces where I live or have lived (even if for a short time): the view from the room I lived in during my six-month stay in Rennes (France), the rooftops I saw from the window of the room I occupied in my parents’ house, the view from an apartment where I lived in Cascais, the gates and walls of the backyard of the house that the Museu da Luz lent me during two periods of artistic residency (2017 and 2019), the view from the room where I stayed twice when I was in residence at Columbia College (2013 and 2017); the various views from the multiple windows of the house where I lived for the first ten years in Caldas da Rainha, the sunny house where I live now, the forest that surrounds the school where I have taught for twenty years. These images are (…) inseparable from words that I repeat like a prayer: tomorrow, oxalá (hopeful wish), desire… etc.
Exhibitions
2023 | Guardar Os Olhos No Bolso – Inland Journal: uma exposição, 35 edições. Curated by Eduardo Matos and André Cepeda. Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, Lisbon
2021 | cartas de amor (solo show), Sala de Leitura do Centro de Documentação e Investigação Mestre Rogério Ribeiro, Casa da Cerca, Almada
2020 | Profs, autores contemporâneos nos 30 anos da ESAD.CR, CCC – Centro Cultural e de Congressos das Caldas da Rainha (catálogo no prelo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ublXyJiFXWI
2017 | O Livro Disperso, curated by Media Instáveis, Casa das Artes, Porto https://media-instaveis.tumblr.com/livrodisperso
articles:
Baraona, Isabel (2023) Cartas de amor. Artigo sujeito a revisão por pares. Vinco – Revista de Estudos de Edição, Belo Horizonte, v. 3, n. 1. Belo-Horizonte (Brasil): CEFET-MG
BARAONA, Isabel – Oxalá. Inland Journal 15. Porto: Inland Journal (Eduardo Matos e André Cepeda), setembro de 2019
MOURA, Mário, GAUDÊNCIO, Susana et all.- Subversão pelo correio. In, Páginas inquietas: sobre documentos insubmissos. Porto, Ed. Mário Moura e Susana Gaudêncio, 2019.
SILVEIRA, Paulo e SALVATORI, Maristela (2022) Variante Circular – projeto de arte postal. Coord. Ed. Maristela Salvatori. Porto Alegre: UFRGS / Instituto das Artes.
