Sylvan and Harsh North

Curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso.

With the participation of: Alejandra Pombo Su, Cem Raios T’abram, Daniel Moreira e Rita Castro Neves, Diego Vites, Judith Adataberna, Lara and Noa Castro Lema, Lois Patiño, Mariana Barrote, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, Maruja Mallo, Óliver Laxe, Salvador Cidrás, Vicente Blanco and Von Calhau!

Is a land shaped by moods and ways of life, by ways of seeing and speaking? By how its inhabitants call rain to the rain, by how they resist the wind, adapt to the heat and face the cold? Are borders wise lines, able to distinguish people and lands or are they arbitrary separations that ignore affinities of blood, genetic patterns and seasonal movements? How are settlements shaped by mountains, rivers and forests? What forms emerge from the humans and nonhumans that inhabit and traverse a territory?

With these and other questions in mind, curators Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso set out in search of the roots, branches and tentacles of the Northwest Iberian Peninsula. Over more than a year, they considered the past and the present-future of this concrete and imagined space, encompassing its seas, forests and villages. They set out with many questions about the affinities and expressive ways of the local people, animals, plants, elements and minerals. They tried to understand the weather patterns and changes, the myths and stories, the rhythms, colours and shapes that make up the Northwest Iberian Peninsula in its reality and fiction.

They didn’t seek to nostalgically celebrate an ancient history of picturesque details or create a time capsule of rurality and ancestry, maritime spirit and incipient industrialisation – tropes often associated with this territory. What drove them was the possibility of tracing an identity that is constantly evolving, that looks ahead while remaining aware of where its roots lie. They followed roads and lines of intensity, centrifugal forces that took them beyond Oporto, towards those supposed borders where exchanges take place.

Sylvan and Harsh North is an exhibition that maps the Northwest Iberian Peninsula as a space of creative genuineness, specific references and idiosyncratic imaginaries. It tries to anticipate how this land is responding to change of climates, identities, mythologies and narratives. Its research was conducted in dialogue with artists and people who are rooted in these lands—listening and sensing beings and experiences from a past that is yet to come and a future that was conceived long ago.

Events
Opening: December 9, 4–8pm
Performance by Mourae (Lois Búa): December 9, 5–6pm, Crónica da Cábria
Performance by Lara and Noa Castro Lema: December 9, 6–7pm, A las aves, meu amigo
Guided visit to the exhibition: January 6, 4–5pm
Guided visit to the exhibition: February 3, 4–5pm
Film programme: February 8–9
Performance by Alejandra Pombo Su: March 10, 6–7pm