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Depth of Field by Mónica de Miranda and Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby by Pauline Curnier Jardin, at the Galeria Municipal do Porto
The Galeria Municipal do Porto (GMP) presents two exhibitions that, based on autonomous artistic approaches, are part of the same curatorial horizon.
Curated by João Laia, Depth of Field by Mónica de Miranda, conceived in co-curation with Nuno Crespo, and Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby – The Freestanding Joys, by Pauline Curnier Jardin, explore variations on the moving image, the body and the systems of its representation. Inserted in the institution's programmatic line under the artistic direction of Laia, these exhibitions project the Gallery as a place of production and articulation of contemporary thought, where the exhibition device functions as a tool to reveal the aesthetic, social and conceptual tensions that permeate art in contemporary times.
In Depth of Field, on the 1st Floor of GMP, Mónica de Miranda refers to an expanded territory of meanings that relate to each other in a ramified way, moving between three distinct levels. Firstly, the title reverberates in the exhibition space itself, in analogy to the forced perspective of the triangular geometry of the mezzanine room, which tapers from its entrance and positions the visitor as a figure observed within a conical perspective. On the other hand, it highlights the centrality of the video installation through the use of a technical term from photography and cinematography, determined by the focal length, by the opening of the diaphragm that regulates the entry of light and by the distance of the subject in relation to the camera. And it also invokes an idea of depth, from a historical, ecological and cosmo-biological point of view, which reflects the artist's conceptual research, anchored in the interrogation of memory by the bodies of the diaspora in the post-colonial context, from a country based on imperialist narratives.
This vanishing point is divided into three parts by the video projections that interrupt it from All that burns melts into air (2020), which proposes a reading of the present on the layers of destruction and erasure in the landscape of the island of São Tomé, to Transplanting (2024), presented by Mónica de Miranda at the 60th Venice Art Biennale, in the Portuguese representation: a ceremonial choreography that intertwines the displacement and rooting involved in the violent movement of colonialism, resonating in the spaces of belonging created by African migrant communities. But it is in The Island (2022) that fiction translates as a strategy to expose reality through archetypal characters, luminous figures of mutants and sentinels in a post-colonial world on the verge of climate collapse. An island utopia that emerges as a hybrid, imagined and insurgent space, where individual and collective biographies develop in a counter-narrative imbued with the weight of the word as a mineral presence and in which the future, intimated by history, becomes an active possibility of rewriting.
Around this triptych is formed the Timelapse (2025), a sculptural and cartographic installation composed of living and reconfigurable stages, activated over time in a collaborative dimension that counters the logic of exclusion by extending into a set of performative and discursive interventions, ending in Reverberações de um corpo-tela, by Wura Moraes, with two sessions on June 7. Wooden staircases and benches, marked by plants, in dialogue with door-sized frames, sometimes empty, sometimes filled with vertical or folded mirrors and red curtains. These elements make up a fragmented architecture, a place of political listening and ecological fabrication where, in line with the thinking of Amílcar Cabral, the ground appears as a bearer of history and the body as a territory in displacement, both mediators of a decolonial expression.
The exhibition Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby, subtitled The Freestanding Joys, by French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin, occupies the large space on Floor 0 of the GMP like a traveling circus traversed by a cathedral-like scenography of objects and symbols associated with female and queer bodies, of marginalized groups in the European context, reinterpreted through plastic distortions and enlargements. Organized in a sinuous circuit, marked by a play of light that gives them tonal gradations from low to shrill, and with the contribution of set designer Rachel Garcia who evokes a theatricality through the transformed use of materials, these large-scale installations disrupt the logic of power and the entertainment industry by alluding to the amusement park and the theater of resistance, displacing them inside the gallery.
Curnier Jardin takes on the role of storyteller, but in her refusal of linearity, she builds a dissonant network of sculptures, videos and performances that question the authority of sexist, ageist and heteronormative discourses. In Hot Flashes Forest (2019), a spectral geography of synthetic skins simulates parts of aged and fragmented female bodies in the peaux de dame, unmasking the systematic devaluation of the female presence. A retrodated Fellini-esque trait is insinuated in Luna Kino (2022), where figurative schemes revisit the women who, during the German post-war period, rebuilt cities and identities. Finally, the exhibition opens onto a monumental arena in Fat to Ashes (2021) that very superficially resembles a melted wedding cake, with small candles outlining the top and the ringing of a bell marking the entrance to the perimeter, leading visitors to an amphitheater-like bench in an area where images are projected, transferred from 16 mm and super 8 film, which follow one another in religious celebrations, popular festivities and the ritual slaughter of a pig in a mountain village, to compose a critique of the spectacle and the persistence of its symbolic violence.
Highlighted in the center, Tunnel of Love (2024) rises like a mirage of an inverted bouquet that invites us to walk through a tunnel whose structure, based on pillars, draws the silhouette of a stylized heart. Inside, Qu’un Sang Impur / Bled Out (2019) revisits the peaux de dame to question forms of social and sexual repression, echoing Jean Genet’s film, Un Chant d’Amour (1950). Between humorous vignettes and radical staging, the artist denounces the exploitation of these bodies, rendered submissive as objects of entertainment and control, by revealing their invisibility, the imposition of gender roles and the patriarchal structures perpetuated by conventions that continue to condition visual narratives and shape the gaze on the other, thus establishing a critical heresy that challenges what is accepted and represented.
The exhibitions Depth of Field, which also includes an extension at the School of Arts of the Catholic University of Porto, and Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby – The Freestanding Joys can be visited at the Galeria Municipal do Porto until June 15, 2025. Also on display in the GMP's newest space, on Floor -1, can the exhibition Primal Form by Francisco Pedro Oliveira be found, curated by Isabeli Santiago, until June 22, 2025.
BIOGRAPHY
Master's student in Curatorial Studies at the University of Coimbra, where she graduated in Art Studies with a specialisation in Film Studies and a minor in Philosophy. Postgraduate degree in Cinema and Audiovisual Studies from the Escola Superior Artística do Porto. Committed to experimental arts with a focus on multimedia artistic projects and the relationship between sound and moving images, themes explored in cultural programming, sound production and voice-over work in radio practice linked to Rádio Universidade de Coimbra.
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