News

Exhibition | 'Meia Laranja' by Ana Amarante and David Lopes

Opening at CIPA - Centro Interpretativo da Afurada, on July 12th 2024, at 6:30 p.m.

— Meia laranja?!
— A meia laranja is part of the sea, the entry of the sea at the mouth of the river.
Until the construction of the breakwater at the mouth, there were floods. And today, if
they removed the breakwater…
(transcription taken by the artists from a conversion with a resident in 2023)

The floods in Porto historically marked the Ribeira do Porto's downtown area, as well as the fishing area of Afurada. The inspiration for this exhibition came from the highest water level reached by the floods in this region. This same line is integrated into the permanent
exhibition at CIPA and connects a series of objects that CIPA collects, reflecting the life and generations of Afurada's residents.

The Meia-Laranja exhibition proposes to reflect on this line as a collective metaphor. That is, it allows us to think of the level as a visible remnant of the body of water that once occupied that space, and simultaneously, it makes us reflect on the bodies of the people who experienced the floods. Using your hand, tell us where do you remember the water reaching? was the question asked to some members of Afurada, reflected in some of the drawings presented in the exhibition. Other works address the floods from an anthropocentric position — in which man sees himself invaded by a natural phenomenon. The body of the river represents the scale of nature imposing itself on the domestic space of Afurada.

The color red was integrated into the exhibition with a specific purpose and an attempt to answer the question: How can contemporary artistic production be responsive to the space it integrates? As visual artists, our concerns are attentive to the access of different communities to the current discourse of contemporary art. But it is essentially a significant challenge that needs, in our opinion, to be experimented with. Thus, due to the impossibility of removing some of the graphic elements that mark the CIPA exhibition room — such as the fire extinguisher, tourist signs, and emergency signage — it was established that the artistic objects would also evoke the red that we associate with emergency.

Ana Amarante & David Lopes