Utopia is alive
Art embodies this whimsical side of fertilizing our lives with new ideas about the world and it makes us think about our status, our daily routine, the way we navigate our own lifes. In a year in which we are facing the revival of the term “utopia”, due to the 500th anniversary of “Utopia” by Thomas More, we take a step into MAAT, in Lisbon, which is re-opening its doors with two brand new exhibitions that make, in a certain way, a manifest regarding this worlds condition.
“Pynchon Park” by Dominque Gonzalez-Foerster, which was at the oval room of MAAT at the same time of the museum’s inauguration, has represented the first part of the exhibition “Utopia/Distopia” (check it at Canal180 Instagram), which is now completed with works of several artists and being described as the first “manifest-exhibition” on MAAT.
Follow the next lines to read our conversation with Pedro Gadanho, MAAT’s artistic director and one of the curators of the collective exhibition “Utopia/Dystopia”.
Canal180: How did you come up with the idea to bring up that topic and how do you describe the conception process of this exhibition, knowing the never-ending possibilities of the theme?
Pedro Gadanho: The perspective of contemporary art and architecture quickly limits the field, which means that, speaking about contemporaneity and speaking about art and architecture is already a manner of limiting the way you are reading the topic. In any case, this topic obviously frames the five hundred years of Thomas Moore’s publication, but it’s also a topic that I had been exploring for some years now. In a matter of fact, I had already written about this contrast between utopia and dystopia and it corresponded to a desire of Fundação EDP to address the idea of utopia, exactly as one of the ideas that could be interesting to inaugurate the museum. The idea of dreams, of the visionary imagination and everything that the museum brings and the new museum can bring too.
Therefore, let us say that we have articulated this double idea of not only speaking about utopia but also about dystopia, because the exhibition and the research that have been done around this subject have, as a conclusion, that we have reached a paradigm shift. That means that, after five hundred years in which utopia was presented in the literary universe, in the political universe, as an idea of progress, as an idea of values that led humanity to advance from the Enlightenment, we suddenly began to live in a time wherein references to this term “dystopia” appeared in a very regular way, in newspapers, etc. Thus, it represented a new kind of situation that is now transformed into a very hot topic with the election of Donald Trump. I think it must have tripled or quadrupled the number of times the word “dystopia” is mentioned in everyday life.
“We suddenly began to live in a time wherein references to this term “dystopia” appeared in a very regular way.” — Pedro Gadanho
Therefore, all of a sudden, the exhibition has become a sort of topic because of this world situation. But in fact, it was an intuition confirmed by the work of many artists, that something was changing. Since the 70's, many artists started to work with dystopian scenarios and architects too, which was their way of criticising reality, the status quo, and what was happening. So, it became very interesting for us to explore a series of works that included this dichotomy, that was, talking about the utopian side and questioning the utopian models that had guided us for hundreds of years, and, at the same time, this invasion of an idea of dystopia, which is a sort of negative mirror of utopia, a negative utopia. Therefore, almost all works speak about this tension between the two, and, in my opinion, this is what the exhibition tries to enhance.
180: Is it inevitable to see Utopia as a way to envision better futures in the nowadays turbulence? What is the importance of sailing across these dreams in the museum’s context?
PG: There are two aspects that I consider fundamental in the context of the museum. On one side, it’s really important to keep this idea alive, that utopian imagination and that the visionary side of art and architecture are essential to defend us from the idea of permanent crisis, so, it’s something that feeds the daily life and transforms everyday life into something more positive. On the other hand, it also has a critical reflection function by launching the debate and awareness of aspects that, sometimes, people understand as unconscious and register the discomfort of the events, but in fact they can’t articulate well or properly think about these issues. And the artists help us to think about them. So, I think this truly is the importance of the exhibition: to create awareness, a consciousness of things that are only watchful or only cose to the level of the unconscious. Because the artists, as figures who always have this kind of seismograph role, as people who intuit specific questions and that are willing to reflect on them, they are usually the first ones to notice those changing signals that the museum can also help to identify and debate.
We also talked with Mexican artist Héctor Zamora, that will present the performance-installation “Order and Progress”, both to see until 24th April.
180: Hi Héctor, congratulations on your excellent work and thank you for your time.
Héctor Zamora: Thanks!
180: We know that you are interested in exploring concepts related to collective memory, myths and desires. What can you tell us about the idea behind “Ordem e Progresso”, the exhibition that you will present in MAAT?
HZ: A provocation, a protest, a cry for help, a critic, a tribute, an order, a progress. An artistic contemporary warfare, in direct relation with the architectural look of the oval room at MAAT, an ornamentation of the tragedy of the Portuguese day-to-day. Basically, the product of the economic pressures which keeps on benefiting a privileged minority. All of this isn’t, usually, associated to this emblematic motto “Ordem e Progresso”—“Order & Improvement”, which comes from the roots of the French optimism and of our western history, but actually, you can tell that this positive philosophy is leading to a cultural and society transformation, thus materialising in the 30 workmen action, each and every one of them immigrants of former Portuguese or European colonies, as well as Middle East ones.
180: Here you’ve worked with boats. They evoke a strong element of Portuguese culture but also they can symbolize a global issue related to migration and borders. This socio-political dimension is a very important aspect of your work, right?
HZ: My works can and have already been defined as sociological, anthropological and/or archaeological. It is within this field of research that its socio-political dimension is generated, but my work does not have the purpose of changing reality. Perhaps it ends by doing the opposite, by adding more layers of complexity. It’s in the discovery and tries to propose a perspective from the optics of non-binary.
180: You are Mexican but you lived for ten years in São Paulo and now you are based in Lisbon. How did these experiences influenced your work as an artist and how do feel about Lisbon as a creative environment?
HZ: In São Paulo, just like now in Lisbon, my daily routine is always as a foreign-immigrant. Being a foreigner and an immigrant is usually associated with struggles, and if we only do focus on the bureaucratic vision of this issue, that’s the only way to see it. As a matter of fact, being a foreigner can also give you a privileged position by not having the cultural and social barriers of the culture and the society where you usually find yourself. Playing the role of the foreigner/immigrant offers you the possibility of looking at your own culture as an outsider, and that vision is one of the strongest characteristics that I can identify in me, because I tend to put myself in this outer vision of my own culture, while I do it for my country’s, city or community, in which they see me as a foreigner. The will to learn and the open view of the world mark my work as an artist, and it’s in that way that I assume my role as a foreigner.
