Jacira da Conceição | Insularity
Beja, June 16th 2023, 20h
Where Igreja de Santo Amaro / Núcleo Visigótico
Free entry
Beja, June 17th 2023, 15h
Where Igreja de Santo Amaro / Núcleo Visigótico
Free entry
My body is an island.
Like suspended islands, we are bodies drifting between the laws of humans and the designs of nature.
Simone de Beauvoir said that "to be free is also to want others".
Photography as a medium for an essay on the human condition in transit between what has remained and what will be.
My skin is no different from yours. I walk with a pot on my head carrying identity through the urban territory. I photograph my body, that is an island, together with other bodies. We hang the pot high. We are the future and the south is our north.
This is the struggle of Jacira da Conceição, ceramist, sculptor, and visual artist with roots in Cape Verde. As she insists on valorization processes, collective labor agreements, equity, and the many doubts about meritocracy, Jacira thinks about the importance of being a woman and of utopia as engines of social and cultural revolution. "Freedom is not taught, but fear and the danger of constrained and voiceless confrontation is instilled: I will continue to suffer for all women conditioned by all those prevented from daring to live in freedom, to live the fullness of their own truth."
Jacira da Conceição (b. 1990, Ilha de Santiago, Cabo Verde) lives and works in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, since 2017. In 2015, she began her journey in ceramic practices, through the relationship she established with traditional Cape Verdean pottery, in particular with the legendary master Isabel Semedo, in Trás di Munti, Tarrafal. In 2009, she travelled outside Cape Verde for the first time. For a year, Jacira cycled across the South American continent. In the Brazilian state of Maranhão, she resides for a month in the Quilombo of Itamatatiua, where she connects with the techniques, knowledge and sensibilities of local ceramists.
In 2018, she holds her first solo exhibition in Portugal, at the Cavalo de Pau gallery in Lisbon. In 2020, the artist exhibits at the Cape Verde cultural centre "da saudade do sal da terra". At the invitation of the Cape Verdean embassy in Lisbon, she creates and installs the sculpture "Flutuar" for the embassy building. In 2021, she is invited to exhibit by the MDM - Women's Democratic Movement, at the MAEDS - Setúbal Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, where she presents the individual exhibition "Badia". In the same year, Jacira exhibits at the UCCLA União das Cidades Capitais da Língua Portuguesa, in the first group exhibition of contemporary Cape Verdean artists "de dentro e fora". She is also invited by MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary Art to exhibit a video screening of her creative process.
In 2022, at the invitation of the University of Évora, she creates a large-scale ceramic sculpture for the Colégio do Espírito Santo, a tribute to Africa "Tchom Bom", and the exhibition "da terra viu nascer do mesmo chão". In September 2022, she takes part in the group show "O Estado do Mundo: Museu do Atlântico Sul", in the white pavilion of the Galerias Municipais in Lisbon, inspired by an inconclusive idea of the disappeared Portuguese philosopher and educator Agostinho da Silva. Jacira is currently preparing an exhibition with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation with a planned opening at the CCCV - Cape Verde Cultural Centre in Lisbon in April 2023. At the invitation of the Luso-Angolan gallery This is not a White Cube, she will also participate with four sculptures to be presented at the Museu da Água - Depósito da Patriarcal in Príncipe Real, part of the International Exhibition of the Arco Lisboa fair in the VIP programme, in May 2023.
