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ROOM 4
Cosmic Tones
FOR ALL AGES
Event
African music and chants inspire
ancestral and futuristic bodies.
Produced during the lockdown,
the drawings trace an undisciplined journey.
When the pandemic forced us into the
first and unexpected lockdown, Francisca
Carvalho (Coimbra, 1981) began to read
a book about medieval illuminated manuscripts and “Jaipur” paper, that she purchased in India, and began to immerse
herself in unique landscapes. Bringing
the visual economy of medieval parchments to the surface of the paper, the
artist scratched, traced and drew using oil
pastels that, literally, liquefy themselves.
She added materials that endow depth, tactility and rhythm to the drawings. Depth,
because we see drawings within the drawings, contours emerging from the contours. Tactility because they appeal to our
sense of touch. And rhythms because they
have no centre and disperse in a circular
and hypnotic choreography. In this room,
which the CIAJG normally describes as
the “drawings room”, the wallpaper activates the mind-blowing and kaleidoscopic
rhythm of the works, as in a lightbox.
Music also inspired these Cosmic Tones.
While drawing, Francisca Carvalho listened to “Awesome Tapes from Africa” - a
digital platform and publisher founded
by Brian Shimkovitz that archives and
disseminates popular music from the African continent.
Francisca Carvalho was born
in Coimbra, in 1981. She has a
BA Hons degree in Philosophy
and Fine Arts. She is the co-founder and coordinator of the
Atelier Concorde, in Lisbon. She
is a professor of Painting and
Drawing at Ar.Co school, Lisbon.
On the basis of her travels to
India, she researched manual
dyeing techniques. Her solo
exhibitions include “Chordata”,
at Culturgest, Porto, “Hasta” at
the Handicrafts and Handloom
Museum in New Delhi, India, and
“Loom” at ArtWorks, Laúndos
(Póvoa de Varzim).