BUBUIA: Breaking Free from Time - Ayşenur Tanrıverdi

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BUBUIA: Breaking Free from Time

DATE

22 Oct 2025

AUTHOR

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi

BUBUIA: Breaking Free from Time

AUTHOR

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi

For some time now, I have been contemplating the possibilities of the body. What is a body, and what can it do? It may dance, suffer, or conceal itself. A body may shift, transform, become a structure simultaneously being built and falling apart, like Sagrada Família, that never-ending labor, yet more sacred than a church.

The body is also the spring from which poetry spills, able to decide the distance it maintains from what surrounds it. A reservoir in perpetual overflow; sweating, weeping, erupting, the body releases the secret waters of pleasure.

It is an open, unhealed wound that opens onto the imagination.

This fluid-soaked wound reflects the fundamental quality of life: its irrepeatability.

On the days when my mind was occupied with these questions, the Bubuia exhibition appeared before me, a collaboration between Guillaume Vieira and João Mouro, curated by Liliana Coutinho. Whether by chance or not, for now, I will call it a fortunate encounter. In the Estufa Fria botanical garden, perhaps the place that has most captivated me in Lisbon, the works reflect the playful dialogue between two old friends and brilliant artists who have known each other since their student years.

Years ago, on the bridge that connects Notre Dame Island and Saint Louis Island in Paris, Guillaume Vieira was having ice cream with Liliana when she introduced him to Céu’s album Vagarosa, which includes the song “Bubuia”. Since that day, the song has acted as a bridge between the two friends, floating through Guillaume’s mind and carrying him all the way to the present.

"I float, navigating, without taking my feet off the ground 365 days on a mission Into the bubuia I go I go, into the bubuia I go"

By dividing the Estufa Fria garden house by house, Guillaume Vieira and João Mouro create a realm of imagination that ironically expresses a state of floating and suspension amid the deeply rooted plants. This “housing system” is inspired by the outward-to-inward spiral flow of one of the oldest known board games, the Game of the Goose. Based on the rules of the game, this spiral walking points to an emotional path that must be recognized by visitors wishing to “travel” between the material world and the spiritual world as they move from house to house.

We also notice that the dimensions of the photographs are arranged according to the Golden Ratio (1:161,8), inspired by Pythagoras’ studies. The audio guide begins with the words: “Oh bearded muse, inventor of the beautiful hypotenuse”, which directly refers to Pythagoras. As can be seen, even as we immerse ourselves in instinctive creative energy, we can still sense the abstract science that subtly surrounds us.

Guillaume and João have woven this meticulous attention into a poetic sensibility that focuses on the ‘moment of creation’ as found in Proust’s novels.

In House 7, we hear:

Deep down, vision blurs what can be seen. Hold, sustain, and go. Warm place of creation.

When Guillaume dives into the water with his disposable Kodak Underwater Single Use Camera, without a tank or wetsuit, with only his bare body, he imitates the movements of the Grebes. The bird radiates a sense of pride and trust. In Celtic mythology, the Grebes are considered guardians of the spirit world, guiding humans toward beauties they would not ordinarily perceive. The structure and curves of his body allow him to sink like a heavy rock to the bottom of the water. Through Guillaume’s lens, we do not expect to “find” anything beneath the surface. These are images of an expanding, growing, always circular, never linear, undatable time. Approaching the limit until it becomes a tiny point, as Céu sings in the song, “On the edge of madness, believing life continues after death.”

I believe definitions are not so important. We all know what poetry is; poetry shapes us, yet we do not know how to speak of it. Watching João’s boats gliding on the water, I see a mode of existence detached from humanity’s calendar, a rarefied way of being. Traces appear of a kind of free creativity, perhaps most powerfully accessible in childhood. João reveals the layers of life between idleness and labor in a celebratory manner. His distinctive music, emerging at the points where materials connect, melts into the humid atmosphere of Estufa Fria.

This oasis in the heart of the city is, at the same time, a rebellion against the mechanical world flowing outside. I recall Jan Steen’s Rhetoricians at the Window. Reading a poem or a play, peering from a window at the carefree, joyful expressions of the rhetoricians, they capture this ordinary moment, opening onto the “creative” adventure of life. It is a quiet resistance to the technical age, pursued with all its absurd ambitions. In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, we watch the character swallowed by the machine, trapped among the gears, spinning helplessly in the mechanisms. Bubuia reminds us of the possibility of breaking free from a world tightly woven with obligations, concepts, and representations, and simply breathing.

Within the purity of that archaic, free world where things have not yet even been named, I find the possibility to rebuild my passions. I embrace variability and impermanence, adopting a stoic perspective that accepts things as they are. I wonder: is imagination a higher form of thinking?

As this journey comes to an end, if this exhibition had a scent, I would define it with the fragrance of the leaves of the Lúcia-lima (Aloysia citrodora) plant. Perhaps, as you walk through the exhibition, you may faintly sense it in a breeze upon your face.

The exhibition, open until November 30, extends beyond its installations, unfolding through live encounters: a concert by João Mouro (Oct 19), a Kung Fu demonstration by Guilherme da Luz (Nov 2), a guided visit by artist Mikhail Karikis (Nov 16), and, to close, a parent-and-child workshop with Sofia Botelho (Nov 30).

BIOGRAPHY

Ayşenur Tanrıverdi is an Istanbul-based writer, living in Lisbon since September 2022. She studied at Istanbul University and is the author of two published works of literary fiction. A regular contributor to Cumhuriyet, a major Turkish newspaper, where she focuses on Portuguese culture. Her essays and critical texts on theatre, literature, and contemporary art have also been featured in various art magazines.

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