Exhibition: "Portuguese Experimental Poetry

Portuguese Experimental Poetry in

exhibition at the São Paulo Cultural Centre

 

Exhibition celebrates 60 years of Portuguese post-verse poetry,

exhibiting works in various formats and media

 

O São Paulo Cultural Centre, equipment of São Paulo's Municipal Secretariat of Culture, will host, fromSeptember 18 to November 14, 2021the exhibition "Portuguese Experimental Poetry", on the Flávio de Carvalho floor.The compilation of works presents, for the first time to the Brazilian public, a panorama of experimental poetry produced in Portugal since the 1960s until today.

 

They are about 80 works by 18 Portuguese artistswith curated by Bruna Callegari and Omar Khouri. The collection covers a trajectory of six decades of poetic production in different formats and supports: prints, paintings, calligraphy, photographs, objects, audios and videos.

 

Nicknamed with the initials Experimental Poetry, a PO-EX never took shape as a closed movement and had little visibility in Brazil, although both countries share the same language and the Portuguese were influenced by Brazilian Concrete Poetry. In the exhibition, works by artists such as E.M. de Melo e Castro, Ana Hatherly, António Aragão, Salette Tavares, Silvestre Pestana, António Barros, Fernando Aguiar, Abílio-José Santosamong others. Deceased last year, the poet E. M. de Melo e Castro, father of the singer Eugénia Melo e Castro, receives a special tribute from the curators.

 

Experimental Poetry has always been configured as an artistic practice of resistance and transgression. "This poetry is born and developed in what can be called the Post-Verse Era, established by the Concrete Poetry, in the 1950s. The experimentalists are poets who value all visualities, as well as the techniques that make them possible. They made use of all the media that presented themselves accessible"explains the Brazilian poet and curator Omar Khouri.

"It is a poetry that, from the beginning, had as a characteristic the dematerialisationIt is a poetry that, from the beginning, has been characterized by dematerialization, practiced at the margins, that has used fragile means and materials and of little circulation, but that is based on a conceptualism conceptualism", explains the curator Bruna Callegari. On her trips to Portugal, Bruna met with artists, collectors and art institutions and collected a varied material, ranging from independent magazines, documents, works on paper, collages, postcards, video recordings and objects. "We present in the exhibition a significant cut, with original materials that mark all the decades from the 1960s to works made in 2018. It is a rich and panoramic material of this poetry, which has crossed the ages, having preserved and expanded its project of cultural resistance and language radicality", declares the curator.

The exhibition aims to rescue and highlight the history of the artists and their valuable cultural production. During the exhibition period, a catalogue-book will be launched, with texts by the Portuguese authors E.M de Melo e Castro, Ana Hatherly and Fernando Aguiar, as well as reproductions of the works on display, most of which have never been published in Brazil. Lives with the poets Fernando Aguiar and Silvestre Pestana are also planned.

About Portuguese Experimental Poetry

 

Portuguese Experimental Poetry emerged in the 1960s, challenging pre-defined methods and conventions in the Portuguese art scene. Recognised in other countries as concrete, visual, spatial or intersemiotic, it called itself, in Portugal, Experimental Poetry with the launch, in 1964, of a magazine with the same name, which reached its second issue in 1966.

 

Two events preceded the appearance in Portugal of original manifestations of Experimental Poetry: first, the brief visit to Lisbon of the Brazilian concrete poet Décio Pignatari in 1956 and, second, the publication in 1962 by the Brazilian Embassy in Lisbon of a compilation of the Concrete Poetry of the Brazilian group Noigandres.

 

In nearly 60 years of existence, Poesia Experimental is still active. Each artist develops a different way of expressing visuality in poetry. Over the years, new generations of poets have continued their experimentation, always maintaining the principle of invention. Everything can become poetry: object-poems, visual poetry, performance-poetry, kinetic poetry and video-poetry.

 

Artists in the exhibition

 

Wilbur-José Santos

Américo Rodrigues

Ana Hatherly

António Aragão

António Barros

António Dantas

António Nelos

César Figueiredo

M. de Melo e Castro

Emerenciano

Fernando Aguiar

Gabriel Rui Silva

Jorge dos Reis

José-Alberto Marques

Nuno M. Cardoso

Rui Torres

Salette Tavares 

Silvestre Pestana

 

 

Service:

 

Exhibition: "Portuguese Experimental Poetry"

Venue: São Paulo Cultural Centre - CCSP

Address: Rua Vergueiro, 1000 - CEP 01504-000 - Paraíso - São Paulo - SP

Exhibition period: from 18 September to 14 November 2021 

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, from 11am to 6pm 

Free entry

Indicative rating: free for all audiences

Access for people with disabilities

Telephone: (11) 3397 4002

 

Idealization and production: Liquid Space

Support: Consulate General of Portugal in São Paulo

Organization: Secretaria de Cultura e Economia Criativa do Estado de São Paulo - ProAC Editais