Critical text

Two simultaneous projections, two parallel narratives converge towards an announced outcome. The perpetual movement of the tides, the passage of time, or recalling what Didi-Huberman teaches us, "before the image, we are always before time"¹, for in front of the image, past and present continuously reconfigure and multiply. In one of the moving images we now observe, a body surrenders at the seashore, gradually becoming submerged as the tide rises, until it vanishes into the Atlantic waters of Coruripe; in the other, which runs simultaneously, as the tide recedes, a small fishing boat, without a master, like a ghost ship, slowly drifts ashore until it runs aground or "hits dry land," as the fishermen on this side of the Atlantic would say. This filmic exercise, titled naufrágio (2021), by Clara de Cápua (b. 1984), incorporates the recurring themes of the Brazilian artist. It is with this piece that she participated in the Biennial, specifically in the video showcase. Currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Clara de Cápua holds a degree in Performing Arts and a Master’s in Arts. Her practice is precisely situated in these two domains: the performing and visual arts, exploring issues of temporality, the tensions between absence/presence, as well as the narrative impulses that emanate from the image. She works with various mediums such as drawing, printmaking, painting, and video.

¹ Georges Didi-Huberman, Before Time, trans. Luís Lima, (Lisbon, Orfeu Negro, 2017), 9.

Carla Santos Carvalho

(Bienal de Arte Contemporânea da Maia 2023 Catalog)