Ombreira da porta / Door frame

June 29th - August 25th 2024

At Spirit Shop, FARRA
MACE - Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas
Elvas, Portugal

Joana Escoval
Nikolai Nekh
Carolina Pimenta
André Sousa
Maria Ventura
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

I’ve always been obsessed with door frames and doors. I think they are the ultimate sculpture. Every door frame is de facto an invisible sculpture. They’re presence is constant. Every time we pass under or through a door frame something happens. We enter a room, we arrive to a situation, we meet our loved ones, or our colleagues. That moment is always, always special. We got too accustomed to it maybe. But the moment is there, always a celebration, a ritual. We celebrate the presence, the movement, the passing of time, arriving and leaving somewhere. Sometimes we fear passing the door frame of the dentist or the doctor. And how many times have we leaned against the door frame in the middle of a discussion with our partner, or our parents. Maybe we forgot how big these door frames looked like when we were small children with our hands on them, portals to another dimension. Doors, and door frames, are the witnesses. They give us a sense of scale, what it means to be an individual, the divisions of space and time, the private and the public. They are borders, they reflect class systems, levels of privilege, the making of decisions.

The exhibition I’ve put together for Spirit Shop this time considers the specific location of Elvas as a strategic point in the border of Portugal. The city has been built as a fortress to define the borders of the country for many centuries. Elvas is a city where history is connected to attacks and violence, what some call strategies of defense. The two forts that “frame” the city (a fortress itself), have tunnels and hidden passages that served to trick the enemy, military constructions built to protect the lines defining the country when politics wouldn’t work. Elvas sits as a monument to the resistance, a symbol of occupation and what it takes to define these borders.

Borders are locations of tension. We can see that at this specific moment in our history with the wars in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, as well as in many places around the world. What we have learned is that the lines defining borders aren’t lines, they are political decisions based in acts of violence. They claim the territory as the most important thing there is. Land possession is still the strongest claim of power. The necessity of ownership and the attachment to a space, for whatever purpose, it still is the drive of many souls. Land property is still the ruler and the maker of power. What does it take to expand the borders and how many are supposed to suffer?

As a territory, Portugal lives the constant backlash of the impetus of its expansion beyond borders since its colonial campaigns. Yet, today, Alentejo’s rural economy develops silently but surely with foreign investment, making borders of private and public more and more defined. The doors that were once closed are now fully open, at least for tourist visits and investment. We are experiencing the projection and the backlash of our will to conquer. Portugal’s colonial occupation since the early stages of modern capitalism is now returning as a spell.

On the other side of the door, of the door frame, there is always something we don’t know, the unexpected. If the motivations are led by fear, then to demonize others is always a protection. Many forms of belief, like religion, have always been a form of framing other cultures. The dogmas of the Catholic church dominated for centuries the production of cultural manifestations in Portugal, reducing and blocking many other cultures and beliefs.

The borders of Portugal have been defined by kings and rulers who believed and counted with the help of the clergy and the Catholic church. It was said to be God given. Books were accessible to very few. The rural world was portraited as a place for the uneducated, the hard work on the land for those who did not study. A complete lie, that separates our understanding of the means of production. But culture comes directly from agriculture: to cultivate something.

The Portuguese are still unaware of what culture means. Anesthetized by private tv channels that create a constant sense of fear and instability, this old country is molded and vampirized by a constant identity crisis, forged by a recent fascist regime that managed to create a sense of whole, a sense of protection and similarity, a false sense of equalness. The lack of curiosity is systemic. Culturally, Portugal was always been a country with an uneducated ruling class, making it a perfect space for thieves and crooks, attracted by the circus, while business is done in plain sight. Passing the border and look for a better future outside of the country was always a quick solution, and it still is.

The cultural fabric contributes to the discussions and decorations of public and private realms, sometimes blurring the lines but still unsuccessful to make a deeper change. There are a few doors we need to pass through. Sometimes we need to put the foot on the door to be able to look on the other side. Nowadays, many of these passages are made without the presence of the body, they can be the screens of our phones and laptops looping the same self-help mantras. Superficiality leads the age of distraction. Education is always silently being threatened by this confusion of sounds, images, empty speeches. I will never forget that we had to teach a prime minister and his minister of education that we wouldn’t pay more than we should to go to school. There are many things that we are taught that are wrong. We need see them from the other side of the door frame and we shouldn’t be afraid to cross it.

PB, April 2024.

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