2021

ÀS NONAS, MIDAS NOS DEDOS MEDRAM E MONDAM

GALERIA DE ARTE DA CÂMARA MUNICIPAL DE ALMADA

Drawing and working with colour have been central concerns in Francisca Carvalho's work, exploring them in a wide variety of media in order to flesh out her aesthetic thinking. This exhibition centers on her most recent textile work, made from cotton and natural dyes (vegetable and mineral). She is interested in the intersection of Western and Eastern pictorial traditions, both in terms of the techniques she uses and the construction of a very unique symbolic vocabulary. Her practice is populated by archetypal symbols that cross various cultures and artistic manifestations and are part of a history whose time frames are distant. With her works, Francisca Carvalho irreverently proposes a blurring of the boundaries between artistic forms, and in particular between contemporary art and what is commonly known as craft. The artist builds up an empirical system of colours into which she integrates the knowledge resulting from practical experience. Colour is the result of human intelligence finding natural resources that are transformed into artistic expression. Nature is a laboratory for observation and experimentation. This almost magical process is also technological, a know-how. There is also an Ayurvedic dimension to these colours. Her work is permeated by the Indian tradition of Tantra, in which the human body is considered a means to knowledge. So, these paintings, due to their verticality, are direct references to the human body. The cut-outs suggest legs, torsos, flat bodies.