Exhibition view at CIAJG, photos by Vasco Célio
The installation Smoke Signals was conceived as a presentation device, prepared to receive isolated images or sequences of images of various natures and sources, as well as a discursive apparatus, as an articulation of its own language.
The title is a programme in its own right. It clearly defines a research process that moves beyond orthodox, canonical and formal linguistic codes. It is true that artistic language often breaks with the communication protocols that are considered to be sociologically relevant. It expands the possibilities of interpretation, by opening up different fields of confrontation, understanding and questioning of the world, and of the beings and things that inhabit it.
Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela explore the principle of simultaneity in this structure, proposing a diverse set of film sequences, in which visual, graphic and sound signs coexist, whose morphology and semantics call for an aesthetic of the diffuse and the occult.
All language is a kind of enigma, just as all forms of existence are a kind of mystery – there is a relationship of intensity between them, between language and existence. They act as forces, sometimes opposing, at other times converging, even symbiotic. Action and enunciation, phenomenon and translation: we act and react to the events that we witness during this ephemeral but persisting passage of time, that we call life.
Sometimes, we see beyond – beyond the present and the physical space in which we move. We decipher encoded messages that remain misunderstood by others. Many ancient civilizations communicated at a distance, without words, by starting and controlling fires. Smoke signals project us into this tangible and intangible territory, in that exact interval, in this fold of language – the way that we talk about the world and represent ourselves in the world – and seeks to probe, in a permanent state of wonder, the density, temporality and anima of beings in the world
Nuno Faria, wall text in the exhibition Chaos and Rhythm, CIAJG
Mariana Caló e Francisco Queimadela 