Session “What can art do?”

On October 25, at 6.30 pm, Zet Gallery and Passeio are organising a new session of the Ágora de Cá cycle, with the theme “What can art do?”. The session will be held at Zet Gallery.

Délio Jasse was born in Angola in 1980, and upon reaching adulthood, left his country amidst the civil war to come to Portugal to study art. His paternal great-grandfather was Portuguese, and so were the generations that followed him. However, Délio’s parents married in the late 1970s, after the Carnation Revolution and the end of the Colonial War, facing new post-colonial legislation that did not grant Portuguese nationality to the spouse in such situations. When Délio arrived in Portugal in the late 1990s, he was considered illegal. His Portuguese citizenship was not recognised, leading him into a lengthy process of regularisation as an immigrant and Portuguese citizen. This prolonged process resulted in various obstacles, such as being unable to apply for higher education, rent a house, or open a bank account, entangling the artist in a Kafkaesque ordeal that lasted nearly a decade, eventually becoming the inspiration for his artistic production, both the cause and consequence of the investigative process he embarked upon. His training involved collaboration with several screen printing studios and the exploration of photography’s possibilities, not only as a technology or medium but also as a document that conceals/reveals a story.

Marta Bernardes was born in Porto in 1983. She is a visual artist, writer and actress, also serving as the coordinator of the education and cultural mediation service of the museums and libraries of the City of Porto. She has a degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, where she taught Fine Arts between 2010 and 2012. She pursued further studies in visual arts and multimedia at the ESNBA in Paris, and in 2008, she completed a master’s degree in Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Culture from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid. Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in Advanced Philosophy at the same institution. Marta has served on the board of the educational service of the Spanish Abstract Art Museum in Cuenca, Spain, and was a member of the exhibition coordination team at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid. Since 2005, she has been presenting her plastic and audiovisual work to the public, along with pieces featuring a performative and musical aspect, both individually and collaboratively within the community.

Bernardo (Alberto Frey) Pinto de Almeida (Peso da Régua, 1954) is a poet and essayist whose work has been published in Portugal and abroad. Since 1974 he has been actively engaged in poetry, theory, historiography, and criticism. Additionally, he is a researcher and professor of art history and theory. Through close relationships with key Portuguese artists of the second half of the 20th century, he has developed critical approaches to their works in collaboration with creation, thus differentiating his own from other critical discourses.

[Posted: 17-10-2023]