This Is Not

They will knows us by
(series)
1. pink
2. scarlet
3. connected
4. foundations

They will knows us by

And then, the Earth stood still

The conditioning or indoctrination of the individual, in particular of children, was one of the great weapons of combat of the antidemocratic regimes throughout the twentieth century. This installation seeks to confront today's audience with the shadows of these propaganda machines, proposing a reflection on the individual's role in accepting these discourses. Through an historical and emotional confrontation, it seeks to expose the risks and dilemmas of the present.

Have You Not Heard?

Synopsis
The Pope and his children arrived to Krakow in Poland. They came from everywhere, with flags and songs. All was constructed on schedule. Wisła, once covered with ice and snow slowly recovers. There are those who are confined, deformed, muted. But poets had once a voice and their mouths full of memories. Capitulation. A bird is dead.

Little Rome Is Watching You

Scenes from Another Bloody Artist's life.

Another Bloody Artist

Where They Belong focuses on the woman’s condition in nowadays western society. It provides a critical view concerning the woman’s place in her own emancipation within her society, as well as, how this role relates with the social role of women in other societies. Seeking to confront the audience with different situations where the woman is led to make choices that affect her social role the work focuses on the confrontation between tradition and modernity, between cultures where women have freedom of choice and others where such freedom is denied.

Where They Belong


Written by Eduardo Marques da Costa
From The Bells Brake Down Their Tower 2016 Exhibition

Ana Rita Canhão’s The Bells Break Down Their Tower is a complex artistic reality where art serves as bridge between past and present, and where history and collective memory are the starting point for a reflection on present day collective dilemmas. The artist takes hold of a variety of references from history, plastic art and poetry to construct an entangled sequence of installations and rooms within Gallery Messier 42 which aim to be the igniters of debate.
As the title suggests the whole concept of the exhibition is based on a tension between the tower, or the institutions, and those that are caught by the power structure of the institutions. The artist ponders on how propaganda is used to indoctrinate individuals and on how these individuals relate with such propaganda in an active or passive way. The role of the individuals is seen not only as that of a receiver of information and conditioning but also as that of transmitter and carrier of the message, either in a voluntary or involuntary way.
The artist delves on our memory of past events to bring forth the consequences of conceding to institutions an unchecked power over the people. The horrors and devastations of the recent past are recalled and work as metaphor for the present. This depiction is not openly shocking but still tries to transmit some of the anguish and dread the artist feels when facing such barbarity.
Furthermore, she looks into a net of interrelations between the individuals and the institutions and on how these are more complex than one would expect at first. She is not trying to expose a dualist reality of evil agents and powerless victims. The men and women depicted throughout the exhibition are quite often both victims as well as perpetrators. Yet, all become affected by the overwhelming weight of the institutions. The only possible exceptions might be the devoted and tender look the artist takes to-wards the Asian comfort women and the African slaves.
This dubious role of the individuals portrayed is at the core of the title’s ambiguous statement and of the exhibition’s conceptual structure. The artist wants to provoke and disturb both visually and conceptually so as to instill doubts. She wants to question who can actually be considered as within and without an institution’s power structure; and who would in fact be able to break the tower, those without or those within.

A Glimpse into The Bells Break Down Their Tower 

The Promised Land - Untitled #8


Where They Belong focuses on the woman’s condition in nowadays western society. It provides a critical view concerning the woman’s place in her own emancipation within her society, as well as, how this role relates with the social role of women in other societies. Seeking to confront the audience with different situations where the woman is led to make choices that affect her social role the work focuses on the confrontation between tradition and modernity, between cultures where women have freedom of choice and others where such freedom is denied.



"In the modern age’s colonial societies it was usual to place a tinplate or iron mask on a slave, such would cover his face or, especially, his mouth." (From the Untitled #1)

The Promised Land

Five Songs

Private Landscape 

Miss Cogito 

The facility with which God is invented 

Either / Or is a journey through the last decades of the history of erudite music in a permanent play of significances between music, art and the sociocultural reality in which they operate.

Either / Or

"Gieseking plays Debussy in Munich" is a set of small paintings about colour and the absence of colour, art and history. 


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Ana Rita Canhão