Luisa Cunha and Andreia Santana at CAV - Centro de Artes Visuais

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DATE

03 Mar 2026

AUTHOR

Mafalda Teixeira

Luisa Cunha and Andreia Santana at CAV - Centro de Artes Visuais

AUTHOR

Mafalda Teixeira

As part of the Cycle A vida, apesar dela (Life, despite itself), the CAV - Centro de Artes Visuais (Coimbra) presents the exhibitions Há mais para além do que os olhos conseguem ver by Luisa Cunha (1949) and Cosmocópula by Andreia Santana (1991), curated by Miguel Von Hafe Pérez. As female artists from different generations and with different practices, they both work from the body, problematizing it as a creative and prescriptive agent. While Luisa's exhibition prompts us to reflect on the body and space as a measure of the world and an aggregator of experiences and memories, Andreia Santana's exhibition, whose title is an appropriation of a poem by Natália Correia (1923-1993), draws on the body and nudity as critical strategies of political disruption against politically correct self-censorship.

The power of words and intonation challenge visitors at the entrance to CAV. Embodied by Luisa Cunha's voice, the provocative statement Outra exposição!? (Another exhibition?!) intrigues and surprises visitors. Between outburst and surprise, using irony and humor, the artist's voice takes on a sculptural quality, revealing the power of the spoken word directed at us, making us accomplice to her interjection. Placed on a white wall, one observes the sound column and the red electronic cable that extends to the amplifier on the floor, simple and restrained technological means that give existence to the sound text they project in a constant loop.

The voice that suggests a body—its own body—is revealed throughout the exhibition, with several works taking it as a reference, revealing it as a measure, as exemplified by the intervention Altura e Largura da Artista (2022), in which she paints a red rectangle with her body dimensions on one of the white walls. Matters of scale, in relation to space and the viewer's body, reappear in Linha #1 (2022), an intervention in which Luisa Cunha draws two parallel horizontal lines along a wall measuring over 30 meters, and between them writes, repeatedly and without punctuation, the following sentence: The heels of my shoes are 5 cm high and when standing this is the line across which I write with the least effort writing across this line is writing across this line everything I wrote above or below this line was not writing on this line. A direct reference to the performative act of the artist's body drawing, the work compels the viewer to be aware of their physical presence in the room and in their own body in motion, which is essential for reading it.

The line as a horizon and boundary that marks the distance between everything we can see and where we are echoes in the work Untitled (Homage to Isabel Mendes), 2014. It is also present in the photographic works that, arranged in diptychs - Object #2 (2005) - or forming a frieze - Kms (2008) - impelling the viewer's movement and the internalization of the passage of time. Records of moments by the artist, in Object #2, we observe the repeated image of a blue cartridge, whose phrases—like titles—summarize the creative process: first find and then search; in the Kms series, we are confronted with the space/time relationship through the mapping of road markers that, like totems, become the past. Next, the video work Mirror#3 (2002-2003) reflects this same interest in time and space, presenting looped outdoor footage that testifies to variations in the surrounding environment throughout the day.

The artist's constant interest in identifying her body and space—architecture, city, and geography—continues in works such as Gritaria (1998-2023) and R/C (2016), in which image and text merge. A direct reference to the home and to how spaces can control people, Gritaria reveals a photograph of a building whose handwritten text addresses issues of belonging, possibly referencing to the housing crisis, mutability, and changes in the city. While R/C presents, in an exercise of remembrance and sharing by the artist, a black-and-white family photograph on the ground floor of her childhood home, the caption of which transports us to another time and a space of freedom where windows were doors. We encounter this window again in I’ll be back (2013), a photograph of a closed shop whose window is covered with transparent paper, alluding to the economic crisis that was being experienced, taking on a presence that is, in reality, the trace of an absence.

Luisa Cunha's irony and humor reach their peak in the self-referential works CV and Selfies #1 (2019). Arranged side by side, the photographic print reveals the dates of exhibitions held between 1993 and 2018, with numerical repetition in cases where there was more than one exhibition in the same year; from numerical seriality we move on to the infinite repetition of the word Selfie, in a play on linguistic decomposition that is accentuated by the different colors assigned to each letter.

The suggestion of a self-portrait, albeit without a face, continues in the series 58-year-old woman at age 2 (2008), pieces on photographic paper whose autobiographical phrases, written in the artist's handwriting, describe childhood photographs—photograph of a 58-year-old woman at age 2 walking naked in her bedroom with her hand resting on the crib railings—in a work in which memory and the past gain effectiveness and materialization in the present. The artist's memories seem to be evoked again in the minimal and conceptual work 02.13 (2018), whose title indicates a date and the objects that compose it: a coat hanger and a bath towel, hanging side by side on the wall, suggest a body, the presence of someone absent. Presences—ours and those of others—are also invoked in Field of View (2010) by the male voice that politely asks us in English: Would you mind moving a little bit aside so that I can see? Thank you.

Urging us to move through space and imagine another body in relation to our own, we climb the stairs to the second floor and come across, in a passageway, a nude self-portrait by Andreia Santana, L’Astoria au naturel #1 (2025). Red-tinged, the selfie taken in front of a mirror, with a bathroom as its backdrop, transports us to an everyday moment of intimacy with the artist. Overcome by sensuality, it draws attention to the cloudy effect—which both conceals and provokes—created by an aluminum mesh. Along with L’Astoria au naturel #2, the artist's second nude self-portrait, and the only ones to feature the human body, we embark on a reflection upon the values associated with the aesthetics of the female nude, transgression, and exposure of the body—of women—in artistic works, recalling feminist artistic production since 1970. Faced with the objectification of the female nude throughout art history and at a time when the female body is still understood as erotic, by presenting her real and present body in a self-portrait, Andreia manages—in this deliberate gesture—to make the image of the woman a present subject. The use of the body—naked or suggesting nudity—as an artistic, political, and social medium, as well as the freedom to think about eroticism and desire, continues in the other works on display. Irony and humor reach their peak with the pair of blown glass sculptures Door Woman (entrance) and Door Woman (exit), placed in different corners of the room. In a play on words with the title of the small pieces, breaking taboos around female genitalia, the viewer is confronted with reliefs of vulvas with legs, arms, and cowgirl hats, in an affirmation of the right to sexual freedom and the exploration of women's pleasure.

Carefully arranged in the exhibition space, extending from the walls that support them, as if floating, there are two translucent metal mesh sculpture-paintings on either side of the room. In a constant game of concealment/revelation between what is public and private, the industrial and minimalist sculptures impose themselves as windows with metal frames, whose aluminum mesh surfaces depict items of clothing: a T-shirt in Cosmocópula (Cosmocouple, 2025) and a baby doll in Mirror (2025). The materials' physicality grabs our attention as we glimpse the incorporation of elements—glass, copper, and tin—which, soldered into the translucent mesh, create visually rich narratives: the silhouette of a body engaged in sexual activity and a woman's hips with garters. Highlighting the “hidden” presence of small colored glass candies, evoking the installations Candy by Cuban artist Félix González-Torres (1957-1996), as symbols of the fragility of life during the AIDS pandemic.

In reflecting on the body as artistic and political material, Andreia Santana's exhibition reveals desire, pleasure, and the eroticization of the body as catharsis, in a work that explores the demand for gender equality in art, the bodily revolution, and the liberating awakening of the female body.

Both exhibitions can be visited at CAV - Centro de Artes Visuais, in Coimbra, until March 8.

BIOGRAPHY

Mafalda Teixeira, Master’s Degree in History of Art, Heritage and Visual Culture from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. She has an internship and worked in the Temporary Exhibitions department of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. During the master’s degree, she did a curricular internship in production at the Municipal Gallery of Oporto. Currently, she is devoted to research in the History of Modern and Contemporary Art, and publishes scientific articles.

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