Manuel Botelho: Slow March
Manuel Botelho’s work has always been concerned with the questioning of personal and collective identity; and his long term project CONFIDENTIAL/DECLASSIFIED addresses a repressed question in Portuguese society – the colonial war, 1961-74. Slow March is the most recent development of this project. In Guimarães Botelho is exhibiting 8 photographs, 2 three-dimensional pieces and a sound installation, occupying all three floors of Laboratório das Artes in the Edifício do Café Milenário.
1st floor: huge tent cloths isolate the photographs’ exhibition area; half buried rifles, houses of cards and maps of uncertain places speak of an empire on the brink of collapse.
2nd floor: a pink wall isolates the installation. Sounding like a radio soap opera, “Letters of Love and Longing” is based on the letters exchanged between Nando and his fiancée Lenita. Botelho found these letters at the Lisbon flea market, bought, transcribed and photographed them. The text locates us in time and in space: Portugal and Guinea, late nineteen-sixties, love and death, jealousy and hope…
3rd floor: hanging from the ceiling we see a “wall” of campaign tent cloths; the story we are told is not shown on them, but we know it by heart, it is a story of men, the abstract story of war and death. A body covered by a Portuguese flag and a folded flag tell us of an inglorious return.
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Exhibition Opening:
Friday 20 January 2012, 22:00 - 23.30h
Exhibition continues until Saturday 25 February 2012
Lab. das Artes is open Wednesday - Saturday, 16:00 –19:00h
Laboratório das Artes
Edifício do Café Milenário
Largo do Toural | 4800 Guimarães | Portugal
www.laboratoriodasartes.blogspot.com
Manuel Botelho – Letters of Love and Longing
D. Luís I Foundation | Cascais Cultural Centre | July 1st– August 28, 2011
Cascais, Portugal
Manuel Botelho: Matchbox: Portugal is not a Small Country
Galeria Miguel Nabinho (Lisboa 20), Sept. / Oct. 2009. Installation view.
ARCO 2009, Madrid
Galeria Fernando Santos presents 4 recent drawings from Manuel Botelho.
Aerograma | Galeria Fernando Santos
Solo Exhibition | Drawings.
from Mars 7 to April 14, 2009
Galeria Fernando Santos
Espaço 531. Rua Miguel Bombarda, 531
4050-383 Porto. Portugal
Tel: +351 226061090 | E-mail: geral(at)galeriafernandosantos.com | URL: Galeria Fernando Santos
Madrinha de Guerra | Centro Cultural de Lagos
Solo Exhibition | Recent Photography from the project Confidencial/Desclassificado.
From Mars 14 to May 9, 2009
Centro Cultural de Lagos
Rua Lançarote de Freitas
8600-605 Lagos. Portugal
Tel: +351 282770450 | E-mail: centrocultural(at)cm-lagos.pt