“and I am sparse in dense fluidity” 
Gestures of Freedom

The BUALA cycle at maat

Arse Over Tit
Andreia Cunha

The Arse Over Tit series started as a display mechanism of failure and vulnerability on social media. Following some friends’ opinions on the negative “social effects” of expressing ridiculousness on a non-anonymous or non-private Facebook profile (in opposition to images of success more adequate to professional and social responsibilities, as they would say), it all began by showing the literal disastrous fall. But, sometimes, falling can be a simple ethical investment.

Andreia Cunha studied Political Science in Lisbon. She was the executive director of Maria Matos Municipal Theatre from 2008 until 2018 and took on, since 2019, the same role at Teatro do Bairro Alto (TBA), dedicated to emerging and experimental performative arts.

Ways of Doing: A Gendered Anticolonial Agency
A screening with interruptions by Rui Vilela

“Since 2016 I have been talking to Bissau-Guinean women to learn about their perspective on the ways of doing the Liberation Movement. In earlier years, I met Francisca Pereira, Teodora Inácia Gomes and Tchadi Sambu. More recently, I had the chance to meet Brinsam Nassentche, Nhema Turé and Segunda Lopes. These dialogues turned into a possibility to articulate a gendered anticolonial agency as carried out in their daily lives amidst the Liberation Movement against Portuguese colonial rule. The author Stephanie Urdang had already in 1979 published Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau. Yet, recent research by scholar Patrícia Godinho Gomes justifiably points out a still existing historiographical gap concerning the life paths of women in the context of the struggle. From the aforementioned women, we hear that they actively engaged in constructing an independent state: they were fighters, teachers, nurses, political commissioners, and international representatives.” Rui Vilela

Rui Vilela is an independent artist based in Berlin. His work was most recently presented at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein [New Berlin Art Society]. He is currently a PhD student in Music with specialization in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aveiro.

Farce. Language, Collapse and Fiction: Rehearsing the Curatorial
Marta Mestre 

An exhibition about language, failing, and fiction, Farsa [Farce] (SESC – Pompeia, São Paulo, 2020) crosses the material dimension of discourses, a rift in reason, and the vital fabulation of life. By connecting experimental proposals from the 1960s and 1970s and artists who emerged in the 21st century, the exhibition lays emphasis on the power of language but also on its own strategies for deconstruction as potential machinery. The exhibition brings together artists, writers, and other creators, and close to 140 historical and contemporary works of art. It presents graphical works, collages, visual poetry, publications, objects, and installations that examine the interrelations between language and art, poetry, politics, and gender issues. This talk by Marta Mestre, curator of the exhibition, will shed light on the idea of farce and parody as means to question the coloniality of language, and the idea of open-ended history. How to weave back together again that which is divided and fragmented? 

Marta Mestre is an independent curator and works in Lisbon and São Paulo. She graduated in Art History and in Culture and Communication, and was the curator of shows in several institutions such as Inhotim Institute (Minas Gerais, Brazil), Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). 

Reading of poems from Mulher ao Mar [Women Overboard] (2010) by the author herself, Margarida Vale de Gato.