fbpx Project PCAxFBAUP: Students from the Transdisciplinary New Media Program traveled to Portugal to initiate a partnership a project and an artistic and cultural exchange — PCA

PCA x FBAUP Cultural Exchange

Visit to the exhibition
Grécia Paola

In March 2019, students from the PCA’s Transdisciplinary New Media (MTNM) Program travelled to Portugal to engage in an artistic partnership and cultural exchange with students of the Master of Fine Arts (MAP) from the University of Porto, Portugal.

While staying in Portugal, PCA students visited different artistic institutions, in both Porto and Braga, including exhibitions of media arts, video, installation, folklore and painting. MAP students accompanied them on these visits and the group had the opportunity to engage in a relevant dialogue around different endemic topics: urbanism, architecture, gastronomy, society, culture and arts.

The visit to Braga was motivated by the fact that the city was designated Creative City of UNESCO in Media Arts in 2017, and also by the exhibitions and activities held in GNRation, a multidisciplinary space where art and technology merge.

During their visit to GNRation, our students viewed the latest exhibition Mono by media artist Ryoichi Kurokawa. The exhibition explores notions like perception and sensation along with a commentary on astrophysics in a proposition of an immersive and a sensorial space. As well, they went to the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, conceived by Pritzker Prize winner Álvaro Siza Vieira, that is dedicated to the display of contemporary art and hosts research events.

Their intensive visit schedule also included Joan Miró’s exhibition Materiality and Metamorphosis, which explores multiple media such as tapestry, painting, collage, sculpture and drawing to embark in a sensorial reflection, and I’m Your Mirror, an exhibition by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos organized by Museo Guggenheim Bilbao in a partnership with Serralves Museum and Kunsthall Rotterdam. In I’m Your Mirror, works were made of different materials, such as ceramics, embroidery, medication pills, cutlery, irons, telephones… The aim was to reflect on problematics affecting the world, such as identity issues (individual-collective, social, national, international…), popular culture, erudite culture, consumerism, among other themes.

As they were received within the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), PCA students engaged in a critical discussion with MAP students. Sharing creative and conceptual practice, all of them reflected on the connections between the context and the materialization of the creative act. PCA students were able to rely on the strong collaboration of the following MAP students: Marta Rosmaninho, Fábio Araújo, Pedro Magalhães, Yuga Hatta, Felipe Rocio, and Grécia Paola Matos.

Being in Porto, and the opportunities that it generated, allowed PCA students to considerably progress on their own personal projects. MFA student Dami Kim, with the support of Professor Rute Rosas, was able to develop her performance project “Line”, which took place on March 7th 2019 in the Southern Pavilion of FBAUP. The performance involved a dialogue between Dami Kim and the audience within a recondite space, where each person entered alone and walked in a straight line towards the performer’s body standing before them. “Line” featured the support and assistance of MAP’s sculpture students Felipe Rocio and Marisa Grilo and PCA’s MTNM student Collin Kluchmann.