Moments of collapse, decay and destruction that cut across the socio-economic aspects of our society are factors that are always present in the work of these two artists. Julia and Barbora always start from the character of space in their interventions. Here, they scan a void space, the old hospital of the Convento dos Capuchos, its physical marks and the signs that are printed on a body through different forms. In this place, the impressions and sensations left by the experience are matter of work. From the factory and its community they brought the remains of textiles which due to its damages or breaks, lost its previous function, revealing their flaws and their mistakes.
ARTWORK
THE LIGHT THAT FINDS THE SPREADING WOUNDS
Barbora Zentková & Julia Gryboś is an artist duo living and working between Germany and Czech Republic. Their artistic practice has evolved over the years, moving from painting to working directly in specific spaces. Since the beginning of their collaboration, they have focused on the limits imposed by images, the potential of representation and the extension of visual codes beyond the scope of the image itself, invading the area and the surrounding context. The curatorial outline behind their residency with Ideias Emergentes was based on the concept of “diagnosis,” which the artists analysed both in a clinical context and in relationship to body and space. Transparent fabrics, similar to the gauze used in hospitals, were transformed into barriers inside the former hospital of Santa Casa da Misericordia in the Convento dos Capuchos. The gauze, dyed through various processes, created and are creating imaginary barriers within the space. This installation becomes a metaphor for our historical moment as the pandemic situation requires all of us to rethink daily spaces in a completely different way.
