Carla Cabanas by Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea

CARLA CABANAS

Carla Cabanas was born in Lisbon in 1979 . Lives and works in Lisbon. Solo shows (selection) XIX Programa de exposições, (Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon, 2015), A Palavra Arquivada (Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa - núcleo fotográfico, Lisbon, 2014/2015), O que ficou do que foi - O álbum Martim Moniz (Museu da Cidade, Lisbon, 2014), Saudades e lagrimas são o unico lenitivo para a grande auzencia (Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea,

Lisbon, 2013), O que ficou do que foi - O álbum Desconhecido (Sala do Veado Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência . Lisbon, Portugal, 2012), Histórias sobre mim (2010, Galeria Magnética - Pavilhão 28, Centro Hospitalar Júlio de Matos . Lisbon, Portugal), A casa onde nasci e outras histórias (2009, Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea . Lisbon, Portugal), Portugal), Group shows (selection) Paris Photo 2015 (Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea), Paris, France

What remains of what it was - Album Martim Moniz, 2012 Intervention on inkjet print, 40x40 cm

El Paisaje Revisitado (curated by Martim Días e Rosina GómezBaeza, Galeria Blanca Berlín, Madrid . Spain), Correspondenciès Lisboa – Barcelona (curated by Jana Orbegozo and Lourenço Egreja) Centro Cultural Espai Mallorca . Barcelona, Espanha Spain, 2014) Habitar a Colecção (Curated by Colectivo de Curadores, Casa Museu Medeiros e Almeida, Lisbon, 2014), Paris Photo (Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea), Paris, France, 2014, Contra o Esquecimento - Coletiva de Fotografia Portuguesa (Curated by Ângela Ferreira, Museu da Cultura Cearense do Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura - CDMAC, Brazil, 2013) 7ª BIENAL INTERNACIONAL DE SÃO TOMÉ E PRÍNCIPE (Espaço CACAU em São Tomé e Príncipe, 2013), Universos pessoais (curated by Colectivo de Curadores) Biblioteca Camões. Lisbon, Portugal, 2013, L’Entre Images – Carla Cabanas | Maria Lusitano

Lusitano Ciclo de Vídeoarte CCC (Centro Cultural do Cartaxo). Cartaxo, Portugal, 2013, 17ª Bienal de Cerveira, Forum Cultural. Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, 2013, ARCO Madrid, Galeria Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Madrid, Espanha Spain, 2013, Divagações curated by António Pedro Mendes, Museu da Carris, Lisbon, Portugal, 2013 Santander, Spain; Domus Artium, 2012, Deambulações (diálogos fotográficos com Orlando Ribeiro), Átrio da Reitoria da Universidade de Lisboa. Lisbon, Portugal, 2012, Museu Bernardo. Colecção e mais (Centro de Artes de Sines . Sines, Portugal, 2011), 90-10 Exposição 20 Anos Artes Plásticas ESAD.CR (Edifício XXI, Pólo Tecnológico de Lisboa . Lisbon, Portugal, 2011, We are pleased to invite you (Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea. Lisbon, Portugal, 2011, Kaunas Photography Festival (Kaunas Hall square . Kaunas, Lithuania, 2011, Mondigital Day

Magnética Magazine, Festival Pop Up, Cinema Nimas . Lisboa Lisbon, Portugal, Take B, Museu Bernardo . Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, 2008 Exposição #5 – Encontro entre a paisagem, e a abstracção (comissariada por Luísa Especial curated by Luísa Especial), Espaço BES Arte & Finança . Lisboa Lisbon, Portugal, 2008, BAC! 10.0 – Pandora’s B Festival Internacional de Arte Contemporânea, Centro de Cultura Contemporânea de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 2009), Impossible Exchange (Frieze Art Fair . Londres, Spain Spain, 2009), Mostra de Fotografia do Programa

Gulbenkian Criatividade e Criação Artística (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian . Lisbon, Portugal, 2008), Exposição #1 (Espaço BES Arte & Finança . Lisbon Portugal, 2008), Expect the World (Video Screening Curated by Solvej Ovesen, Ana Pinto e Estelle Blaschke, Museu do Chiado, Lisbon; Bethanien, Berlim, Alemanha, 2002)[Collections (selection)] BES art_Colecção Banco Espírito Santo. Lisbon, Portugal, Fundação PLMJ. Lisbon; Portugal, Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild Europe. Leticia and Stanislas Poniatowski

What remains of what it was - Album Martim Moniz, 2012 Intervention on inkjet print, 40x40 cm

What remains of what it was Album Martim Moniz Started in 2012, with the International Residency “Transitante: entre álbuns e arquivos”, co-sponsored by the Lisbon City Archive, the Archive collections would become the inspiration source for some of the works by participating artists, particularly for that developed by artist Carla Cabanas, which evoked the place where the residency was taking place: the Martim Moniz. Her artistic research was focused on the images of this area that were available in the LCAPhotography's database, particularly in a set of images from the 1950s, taken by Judah Benoliel (1900-1968). This album would resume the questioning the artist had been developing in previous work, namely identity loss and the role of time in failing memory. This new work, nevertheless, would reflect an aspect that had not been yet explored: memory of place. Her image selection revealed a part of the city that was changing massively, where one can see the urban interventions taking place, especially demolitions of buildings.

From this outset, all the erasing done to the image (by scraping off the photographic emulsion) became a demolition itself , since the artist would still be taking more information and possible references, making the identification of the place almost impossible. This intervention, carefully executed on the buildings that were not being taken down, is deliberate and wishes to draw our eyes to the absence, the rubble, to what remains of how it was. This technique, however, somehow betrays the artist, since the “vanishing” incisions end up producing a surprising effect that adds yet another dimension to her work. The result is an uncanny combination of what remains of the image and texture now being added to it. Carla Cabanas would also come to develop other ways to retrieve the memory of the place. She interviewed old Martim Moniz dwellers, recording their testimonies, personal recollections and experiences that somehow recover a collective memory of that place and of city history. The artist also asked those interviewed to draw her the

central square, from memory, in any of the shapes they remembered, thus gathering a group of maps and street plans that unravel other social dynamics of the city. In 2014, O que ficou do que foi – o álbum do Martim Moniz recovers this/these story(ies) in a site-specific installation created for the City Museum, a reference in the preservation and construction of Lisbon's memory. Sofia Castro

What remains of what it was - Album Martim Moniz, 2012 Intervention on inkjet print, 40x40 cm

What remains of what it was Archived Word developed from a set of early 20th century postcards belonging to Carla Cabanas' own private collection, and some others belonging to Eduardo Portugal's - collection of Lisbon City Archive Photography. Following on the reflection which has been directing her artistic career so far, particularly matters and questions dealing with loss of memory(ies) and the passage of time in documents and images, this exhibition brings to light yet a new configuration in the artist's work. Postcards overlap memories of a kind of communication that is quickly disappearing; nevertheless, they are also tokens of a past where this exchange of words and images

distance, about sharing a sense of longing, and the experience of absence. By using the precision of laser cutting, the intervention made on the document is now automatic, and cutting around/ across it becomes a way to explore the three-dimensional object, since this process conducts a series of interferences on both sides of the postcard. PALAVRA ARQUIVADA/ archived word is taking on new routes in questioning legibility itself, creating a vantage point between the recognizable, the identifiable, abstraction, and the frailty of these objects. Sofia Castro What remains of what it was - Archived Word, 2014 Laser cutting on inkjet print, acrylic and wood, variable measures.

What remains of what it was - Archived Word, 2014 Laser cutting on inkjet print, acrylic and wood, variable measures.

Exhibition Views from Paris Photo 2015

What remains of what it was - Album S. Tomé e Príncipe INTERVIEW* with Carla Cabanas, by Lúcia Marques, on Cabanas's exhibition Saudades e lagrimas são o unico lenitivo para a grande auzencia Lúcia Marques (LM): This project came about with the chance of doing a residency in S. Tomé. What ideas did you take there with you? Carla Cabanas (CC): I wanted to keep dealing with the issues of Time and Memory and working on representations of a given space. I had thought of digging up old images of the islands and confront this idea of a place with its reality. Therefore, I was excited about the opportunity to go there myself and let the experience influence my relationship with the images and thus with my intervention over them. I wanted to experiment with color photography, since I had never done it before, and I started looking for old negatives and slides. I'd thought about a more recent time frame (the 80s), where these formats were fairly common. However, I couldn't seem to find any material to work with, either in libraries and archives or the private sources I knew of. Then I started looking for older images and, after many setbacks, I found this set of

postcards. I thought they were really interesting because they combined two symbolic expressions: image and writing. Postcards were created to serve communication, connect people in distant places, but they also manage to historically portray a particular time and place, even though this portrait is deeply manipulated, as are most postcards... And so I went to S. Tomé, carrying all these ideas and 20 kilos of photos. LM: What changed in your plans throughout the residency? CC: I began by visiting some of the places pictured in the postcards, especially the farms and towns. I carried small copies of the photos with me to try to identify the places and show them to people. And even though I had picked and printed the photos myself, I was feeling uncomfortable with working on them, because they referred to a colonial past, with all that this entails. I was faced with a dilemma: what should I do with these images? I was a bit confused for a while, because my work has nothing to do with a particular time frame, or the circumstances

interested on working on that there. It also happened that every time I showed the postcards to the islanders, they became sad, not for being reminded of those colonial times but because they somehow realized that their heritage is slowly disappearing and they have no means of preserving or restoring it. But my discomfort lingered. On the other hand, I was deeply impressed with the island's beauty and the overwhelming forces of nature: if people are not careful(in a relatively short time) the woods will take over the built places and vanish forever. It's as if the island is reclaiming its natural space by slowly taking over everything. This can happen all over the world, but here this strikes us as more evident because it happens so much quicker. Besides, an image and a sentence kept on hovering in my mind, very present: “longing and tears are the only relief for the great absence” ("saudades e lágrimas são o único lenitivo para a grande ausência"). This sentence was handwritten on a postcard I had picked, but above the image. Someone had picked a postcard with a waterfall and wrote this over the

surrounding the images, and I wasn't

image. The sentence was following

me because it relates very strongly to what I do in my work. And because at some point I was missing home myself... In short, what happened was that throughout most of the residency I was researching and reflecting, and focused more on rendering the videos than on working on the photos. LM: Were you “longing” ("sentir saudades")...? CC: (laughter) Yes... But I used this sentence for the title because this awareness of what is missing, and absence, has been a strong and constant key in my later work. LM: Namely in the "Álbum Cabanas" series... You have already worked on images from your own personal background, alongside others from postcards bought in the flea market (“Álbum desconhecido”). In this new series you are debuting images that have once again an emotional value, this time connected to your experience of a place (and how they relate to the past of a place where you were doing a residency). You started by those that now display natural motifs (which are What remains of what it was - Album S. Tomé e Príncipe, 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm and 60 x 40 cm.

more directly connected to your previous work) or by those which have received postcard fragments?

CC: I first started working with text over photography because it was that kind of intervention that interested me the most at the time. But just as I finished the first one I realized that I was missing Nature. It wasn't a logical thing or

anything like that, it was something I felt, as if I wasn't being honest with myself... And it didn't make sense to use just one thing if I felt I needed both. I had thought the work would be more coherent if I only used one language, but I couldn't forsake the other one. The next day, still in S. Tomé, I started doing the other way around. I

What remains of what it was - Album S. Tomé e Príncipe, 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm and 60 x 40 cm.

create very intuitively and I am only able to rationalize it when project develops further on. LM: In that development you felt the need to include the two videos that are being screened... From the multi-element static image we move to the static shot, where the human figure is no longer the protagonist (or so it seemsâ&#x20AC;Ś). What is the role of the videos in the overall project? CC: While the postcards sum up the passage of time (showing both the process and the outcome of the vanishing image), the video pieces hint at a real-time deterioration... unperceived but nevertheless present. Even if one cannot see it, time does to places what I do to pictures. I felt it was important to contrast these two vanishing velocities. [*] After visiting the artist's studio, the conversation-interview continued via email, which resulted in this final edit.

What remains of what it was - Album S. TomĂŠ e PrĂncipe, 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 40 x 60 cm and 60 x 40 cm.

Exhibition Views from the solo exhibition at Carlos Carvalho Arte ContemporĂ˘nea

Exhibition Views from the solo exhibition at Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea (video stills from O que ficou do que foi - Álbum São Tomé e Príncipe - Roça Fernão Dias | 2013, 7’13’’, Video color HDV, mute, loop)

What remains of what it was - Album Unknown / Album Cabanas In a cold sunny Saturday I went to the studio where Carla Cabanas was finishing her pieces that are now being presented at Sala do Veado and collected in this catalogue. Before I describe to you the reason why I was fifteen minutes late that day, let us stop for a while to consider this object that holds this text and the images I am trying to respond. What remains of what was – before correcting it, I was writing from memory: what was written of what was… and I wonder if it could be the same thing, that just what remains inscribed (written down, described, reproduced) is what endures – What remains of what was, so far, collects two series: “Album Cabanas” and “Album Unknown”. The production dates for the works are, respectively, 2010/11 and 2011/2012, even if we can find this dating somewhat imprecise. The creative process engaged by Carla

Cabanas is recurrently asking us to make memory (personal and emotional) and the technical

technical history of photography (the use of pinhole cameras or old photos take us to that timeline) coincide. If we consider that in these two albums are gathered black and white square-type photos in white frames, and some of these images have been, to a more cautious view, fixated on glass, we come to the conclusion that these photographs belong not to this digital century, but to the beginning of the previous one, or even the final period of the century before that one: the century that witnessed the birth of photography. By a close reading of the image (landscape, architecture, furniture, clothing, posture, eye rapport, etc.) we manage to locate the images’ different times somewhere between our own recognition of collective history and the empathy we establish with each life’s events. These two sets of photos, gathered and pinned down by the artist, differ from one another in the affection that the images themselves had evoked beforehand. The original photos gathered by Carla Cabanas in “Album Cabanas” portray people, places and genealogies which, even if distant

from her memory, are retraceable by the artist and in which the viewer acknowledges a familiar feel. In “Album Unknown” different eras, families, countries, are gathered. It is a completely fabricated community – a memory, a history. I don’t mean by this that it is not authentic or even that it can not deliver us a sense of familiarity. (One can actually find oneself in this geography of chance). The feeling that this set sends back evokes the Freudian notion of uncanny – something at once familiar and foreign. In fact, uncanny could replace the word photography (light+writing); the fixed image can always summon this simultaneous occurrence of such opposite feelings. A time lapse expressed in a fragment of a whole (history), isolated from its setting and not anchored to a text, holds a ghostlike presence destined to become a forgotten memory. Let us go back to that winter Saturday morning. Carla Cabanas’ studio is located on a third floor of a building in one large avenue in Lisbon. That morning that important street was closed to traffic because it would be

What remains of what it was - Album Unknown, 2013 Intervention on inkjet print, 110 x 90 cm, 110 x 110 cm.

would be the passageway for a demonstration. The only restlessness that could be felt was the clanking of objects being handled in an antique market that occupy the avenue’s middle gardens. The tar carpets were (meanwhile) silent, empty, filled with my memories of people and drive-by cars. Unknowingly, this trail by different times and absent spaces, was preparing me for the introduction to those forgotten memories Carla Cabanas was bringing back to life, in her studio. A geography of chance was being mapped, right there, silently. An album we all are also, by nature, part of. While she was contextualizing “Album Unknown” within her previous work, Carla Cabanas was telling me she didn’t have that many memories. That she didn’t know that many stories about herself. Much of her previous work, on which we took some time, had started from the same drive: to record the time one takes to describe eras, memories, forgetting. Through recollection, reporting by heart, times and places were once described to the artist, by several close and not-so-

close friends, strangers and not-sostrangers. In the process of inscribing the fragments of other people’s lives, or even, sometimes, changing narratives to include her own voice, the artist finds her memories in others’. That special connection to memory, to history, is a much human characteristic. We turn to memory and history to find identity. History is made of text and image, perchance in equal amounts. And even though images are as easy to forge as text, images – especially photography – have that weight, that strong aura of authenticity. Images are as if conventions of certain evidence. “Album Unknown” then places us in this mist, of authenticity, familiarity and intimacy. We can, however, trace analogies (it is comforting) between photographs: repeated elements (a window, a tree); the same people trying out their poses (around a table, on a boat); motives for taking pictures (a family trip, a photo to send the boyfriend). Relationships between images and the treatment the artist has devoted them; the many evidence there documented up against what is

outlined, erased or veiled create a narrative channelling the familiarity and the oddness of these photos to a shared plane. That Saturday, I left the studio with the feeling that the photos gathered, collected and later interventioned by Carla Cabanas were already her own text, memory and history. And ours. On the way back, I remembered W.G. Sebald’s novels, the essential duality between text and image in his storybuilding, the first feeling that his novels are realistic and they resemble autobiographical narratives. In his books, as in the inscription method used by Cabanas, the narrator’s voice is always first person but not always speaking with the author’s voice. Even though Sebald denies that the events described in his novels ever took place, his inclusion of evidence (images) in the text lead us back to an hesitation between what we believe is real and what we believe is fiction. And we try to restore those gaps with what is ours or with what we find of us in others. It is a known fact that Sebald would often take

photocopies to enlarge or reduce an array of photos and other visual material, in the alleged intention of reproducing them in his manuscripts. In his first novels, images resembled photocopies, worn out, faded, images destitute from visual data or reference that text complements. It is the deeds of people like Sebald that help us understand why the greek goddess Mnemosyne endowed poets with the gift of memory. It is no coincidence that Aby Warburg, in early 20 th century, called his project Atlas Mnemosyne, after collecting, editing and establishing relationships between images of the most varied origins. The same obsessive need to understand the world, by drawing it, is what brings Warburg and Sebaldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s projects close to one another. Coincidence, analogy and affinity also play an important role in the construction of these geographies of chance. In fact, they never really are. Because memory awakens memories from the most insignificant element; that element will always be evidence of something. The first photograph. Exotic fruit is What remains of what it was - Album Cabanas, 2010/2011 Intervention on silver print gelatin proof/paper, 30,5 x 40,6 cm image:20 x 20 cm.

being served to white military

men by a black woman. The photo quality takes us back to the dawn of photographic technique. We cannot tell for sure who the colonials or the colonizers are, nor identify the colony. But we can recognize, in the photo, attitudes/notions belonging to a meanwhile obsolete western thinking. Language, the world, has changed. The first of the last photos. Someone is being portrayed in the Tagusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s south bank, having both the April 25 Bridge (Salazar Bridge, at the time) and Lisbonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vistas in the background. This is a reading made from this point of view. Somewhere else, this bridge may as well be the Golden Gate, and San Francisco in the dim horizon. Or, yet, it can be a bridge over a river where the absent person is filled in by the memory of a self. I realize, now, that before I have described these images using a paradoxical term, memories are never forgotten. They always go back to whoever reads them, in a present time. Maria do Mar Fazenda

What remains of what it was - Album Cabanas, 2010/2011 Intervention on silver print gelatin proof/paper, 30,5 x 40,6 cm image:20 x 20 cm.

Celtis Australis L. This project contains two moments: an exterior and an interior. Both are born from the idea, developed by the artist in residency, whose starting point are the leaves of the trees in the garden. In this process the artist acquired random photographs at the Feira da Ladra in Lisbon. These were then scanned and printed by ink jet process and then the paper was laser cutted. The final work is an installation that works as a metaphor and it occupies one of the rooms in the palace and the fountain in the garden. For the artist, the main focus of the work is the point in

which the installation on the garden is exposed to climate elements, such as wind and sun, and its consequent transformation. The 13.200 leaves are a metaphor for the process of life and its evolution. The visitor will be confronted, in the words of the artist, by the poetics of time. Lourenรงo Egreja Exhibition Views from the solo exhibition at Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon

Exhibition Views from the solo exhibition at Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon

Essay for the Construction of an Herbarium, 2013 Laser cutting on inkjet print, 20 x 20 cm (40,5 x 38,5 cm) framed

Essay for the Construction of an Herbarium, 2013 Laser cutting on inkjet print, 26 x 16 cm (37 x 37, cm) framed

Essay for the Construction of an Herbarium, 2013 Laser cutting on inkjet print, 23 x 15 cm (44 x 37,7 cm) framed

Essay for the Construction of an Herbarium, 2013 Laser cutting on inkjet print,33 x 21 cm (54 x 39,6 cm) framed

ÂŠ Carlos Carvalho Arte ContemporĂ˘nea All texts and images from http://carlacabanas.com

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