Mergulho e Hipnose [Dive and Hypnosis]
22 march — 23 may 2021
Curator: Helena Mendes Pereira
Production: Museu da Água de Coimbra

The exhibition brings together works from the Norlinda and José Lima Collection to mark the International Water Day and the fourteenth anniversary of the Coimbra Museum of Water. Curated by Helena Mendes Pereira, the theme of the show is mental health and the issues of loss or liberation featuring a dialogue that questions the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown period while celebrating and reinforcing the importance of water as a natural resource. In Mergulho e Hipnose the aim is to render times and spaces slow and dense, indeterminate and disturbing. The exhibition’s design functions like a trajectory and proposes an integrated reading. However, each author and each creation contain an individual mythology to which everyone will add their own (re)readings in an exercise of sharing that sees art as a major vehicle for the transformation of consciousness. The layout of the exhibition invites viewers to ‘dive’ in the space and let themselves be ‘hypnotized’ by the narrative violence of some of the artworks on show, which has been curated beyond mere visual combinations to generate conceptual, philosophical and poetic ambiguity.

Helena Mendes Pereira is a curator and researcher of contemporary artistic and cultural practices. She holds a BA in Art History (FLUP) and attended the specialization in Museology (FLUP) and post-graduation in Art Management (UCP); she holds an MA in Communication, Art and Culture (ICS-UMinho) and is a doctorate student in Sciences of Communication with a thesis on the art market in the post 25 April 1974 Revolution period. She is currently chief curator at shairart and a professor of Contemporary Art. Pereira collaborates in several curatorship and cultural education and mediation projects for the Fundação Bienal de Arte de Cerveira, an institution where she first began working in 2007. She writes regularly for the art press.

Artists

Álvaro Lapa
Araci Tanan
Eva Lootz
João Louro
João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva
João Onofre
João Penalva
Jorge Queiroz
Júlia Ventura
Lygia Pape
Michael Biberstein
Miguel Palma
Nelson Silva Sousa
Noé Sendas
Noronha da Costa
Pedro Cabrita Reis
Rui Chafes
Santiago Ydañez
Yonamine

Featured works

Júlia Ventura. Geometrical Reconstructions and Figures with Roses #14, 1987 © André Rocha

Jorge Queiroz. Untitled, 2008 (detail) © Paulo Cunha Martins

Álvaro Lapa. Casamento, 1967 © André Rocha

João Penalva. Untitled (Brown), 1997 © Dinis Santos

Júlia Ventura. Geometrical Reconstructions and Figures with Roses #14, 1987 © André Rocha

Jorge Queiroz. Untitled, 2008 (detail) © Paulo Cunha Martins

Álvaro Lapa. Casamento, 1967 © André Rocha

João Penalva. Untitled (Brown), 1997 © Dinis Santos