Heteroclites programme and 2022–23 exhibitions

The CIAJG/ José de Guimarães International Arts Centre (Guimarães, Portugal) presents a series of new exhibitions and dialogues with the collections of African, Pre-Colombian and Chinese art objects. Artists, architects, musicians and performers are invited to reflect on the museum as a polyphonic space of resonances, singularities and distortions.

The next cycle of exhibitions—1128 OBJECTS—will include the participation of the artists Sara Ramo, Pedro Huet, Darks Miranda, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, the architects André Tavares and Ivo Poças Martins and the designers Macedo and Cannatà, among others.

Based on an assembly of different intensities that occupies the museum’s entire upper floor, the exhibition cycle proposes a critical reflection on the crisis of objects and their representations, through staging of a collection that, under the same unifying gesture, brings together so-called “extra-European” objects and contemporary art, artistic and religious items, materials from different countries and cultures. 

Artistic director: Marta Mestre

Opening
October 8, 2022, 5pm–12am

Music and sound performance: Ana Pacheco / James Holden + Waclaw Zimpel / Lila Tirando La Violeta / Dakoi / Programmed by Revolve

Upcoming exhibitions
October 9, 2022–February 26, 2023

Sara Ramo: Atirando Pedras (Throwing Stones)
The ambiguity of the human condition, the fault and the flip side, the forces that erupt from silenced voices, the inversion of the language that alludes to carnival… All this permeates the objects that Sara Ramo has created and the relationships that she weaves, in installations that capture visitors’ senses. Atirando Pedras (Throwing Stones) is the first exhibition in Portugal by the Spanish-Brazilian artist, Sara Ramo.

1128 objects
With African arts, Pre-Colombian arts, Chinese arts and artworks by José de Guimarães
Heteróclitos (Heteroclites) is an exhibition-essay that displays the entire collection of the CIAJG: 1128 objects of African, pre-Columbian, ancient Chinese art and works by the artist, José de Guimarães. In a gesture that reverses the usual occupation of the museum’s spaces, this exhibition emphasises its capacity to produce discourses and fictions, exposing some of the rhetorical mechanisms of the construction of meaning. Since this is a new assembly for the CIAJG’s collection, it focuses on the “mismatch” between things and their representations, the struggle of identities in which the different elements cannibalise each other.
The architectural project is designed by André Tavares and Ivo Poças Martins. The visual identity is designed by the atelier Macedo e Cannatà.

Temporary Experimentations
An architectural prototype by André Tavares and Ivo Poças Martins
Until now, the collections have been displayed in the CIAJG room in autonomous units (“pre-Columbian” and “ancient Chinese art”), protected by a large window. A new “display” is now projected that combines objects from the four collections, which observe each other. The orientation of the exhibition supports is inverted in the “mask room”, one of the CIAJG’s emblematic spaces, where African masks are permanently displayed. This is a subtle rotation that produces a profound change in the perception of the objects on display.

Things in Motion
With Darks Miranda, Pedro Huet, Mariana Caló & Francisco Queimadela, among others
“Things in motion” is an archive of still and moving images that emphasises the cross-relationships between surrealism, ethnography, contemporary art, carnival and colonialism. The archive is distributed throughout the entire exhibition “Heteroclites: 1128 objects”, questioning not only the gesture of exhibiting works inside the museum, but also referring to the very life of objects, including their dysfunctionality and capture. 

To be continued…

Until July 31, 2022
Throat
Curated by Raphael Fonseca
With Afra Eisma, Asgen Jorn & Noël Arnaud, Dalila Gonçalves, Gabriel Abrantes, Gabriela Mureb, Janaina Wagner, João Ferro Martins, La Chola Poblete, Leonor Teles, Luís Lazaro Matos, Oficina Arara, Rosa Ramalho and Tom Zé.

Until September 18, 2022
Pedro Barateiro: The Monster’s Tongue

Until February 26, 2023
Yonamine: EU UE / Amnesia & Dyslexia

Until September 18, 2022
Max Fernandes: Foreshadowing The Future

Until February 26, 2023
José De Guimarães: Manifestos

The José de Guimarães International Arts Centre (CIAJG) is a contemporary art centre, located in Guimarães (Portugal). Its cultural project is underpinned by the collection of the artist, José de Guimarães (b. 1939), comprised by African art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese art and a representative selection of his own works.
Based on converging and competing culturally diverse ways of knowing the world, the CIAJG aspires to transform itself into a polyphonic project, where fiction and politics contribute to continually reinventing the vocabulary of the museum.

The CIAJG’s mission is conceived within this framework: to be diverse, inclusive and plural. To build audiences, create critical sensibilities and meanings. In the words of its artistic director, Marta Mestre: “the CIAJG’s mission is to participate in the cultural and social development of the local territory. To serve as a place of transformative experiences. To preserve, research and disseminate its collection. To welcome the gazes and discourses of visitors and those who occupy it. To observe the narratives of art, expressions of artistic thought and production. To refound the museum as a place for discourse and listening, as a redesigned topography of fictions and untold stories.”

Since its inauguration in 2012, the CIAJG has established itself as an experimental and discursive cultural project, that presents reflections on its collections, based on continuous critique of the idea of a museum. The regular schedule of exhibitions, performing arts and public programmes is complemented by the educational programme and initiatives designed to promote the region’s cultural development.

Press office A Oficina
Bruno Borges Barreto, brunobarreto [​at​] aoficina.pt / T +351 253424715 / 915191218