Carla Filipe
Learn about the artist's universe through a text accompanied by a selection of works from the exhibition “All I want – Portuguese women artists from 1900 to 2020”
By Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Text by Lígia Afonso / Plano Nacional das Artes
Born in 1973, with Portugal on the cusp of revolution and amid a groundswell of democratisation, Carla Filipe would go on to deploy autobiography as a record of contemporaneity from an early stage of her career.
Ghost Wagon Memorial (Flags) (2011) by Carla FilipeOriginal Source: Art Collection Fundação EDP
Ghost Wagon Memorial (Flags), 2011
Sewn fabric, eyelets
15 x (300 x 187 cm) (flags)
Variable dimensions
Art Collection Fundação EDP, inv. EDP.0417
Taking the individual and subjective as a starting point for making wider collective and political points, her work centres on themes that are familiar to her, such as the challenges of living on the breadline, survival, working illegally and independence as a way of examining cross-cutting issues like notions of territory, work, property and representation.
In her performances, installations, sculptures, drawings, posters and artist’s books, Filipe questions the structures that allow artists to be inscribed and protected within their professional and working sphere, as well as public community gardens or nightlife in the city of Porto, Portugal.
Family (2005) by Carla FilipeOriginal Source: Collection Jorge Gaspar and Ana Marin
Family, 2005
Mixed media on paper
65 x 50 cm
Collection Jorge Gaspar e Ana Marin
Family (2005) by Carla FilipeOriginal Source: Collection Jorge Gaspar and Ana Marin
Family, 2005
Mixed media on paper
65 x 50 cm
Collection Jorge Gaspar e Ana Marin
Family (2005) by Carla FilipeOriginal Source: Collection Jorge Gaspar and Ana Marin
Family, 2005
Mixed media on paper
50 x 65 cm
Collection Jorge Gaspar e Ana Marin
Her work draws upon the vital energy of the streets and the mechanisms by which they communicate: posters, words and images. She collates visual material from Portugal’s post-revolutionary period to create “experimental documents”, preserving graphic features but rejecting the the text, then updating the propagandist message in the form of new prints, posters or banners. Such pieces declare, for instance, that “The cultural revolution belongs to the artist” and that “There will be no art tomorrow”.
The people reunited will never be - Graphic Representations (2009/2010) by Carla FilipeOriginal Source: Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas – Collection António Cachola
The people reunited will never be - Graphic Representations, 2009 – 2010
22 chairs; 18 paintings: acrylic paint on paper
15 x (88,5 x 69 cm), 88,5 x 67,5 cm, 89,5 x 70 cm, 89 x 60 cm
1 flag: fabric and direct print
416 x 320 cm
15 music themes selected from Antologia da Música Regional Portuguesa [Anthology of Portuguese Music] (Fernando Lopes Graça and Michel Giacometti, Label: Arquivos Sonoros, 5 volumes, 2nd edition, 1960-1970)
Variable dimensions
Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas – Collection António Cachola, inv. 18.MM.74
Learn more about the artist:
Interview with Carla Filipe | ART SITUACIONS (in Portuguese)
Exhibition "da cauda à cabeça", Carla Filipe | Museu Coleção Berardo, 2014 (in Portuguese)
Monograph "da cauda à cabeça", Carla Filipe | Museu Coleção Berardo (in Portuguese)
Exhibition «Amanhã não há arte» [Tomorrow there is no art] – Carla Filipe in conversation with João Mourão and Luís Silva (in English)
Carla Filipe na 32ª Bienal de São Paulo, 2016 (in Portuguese)
Selection of works presented at the exhibition All I want: Portuguese women artists from 1900 to 2020, in its first moment at Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, within the scope of the cultural program that takes place in parallel to the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2021.
Exhibition organized by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage (DGPC) and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in co-production with the Center of Contemporary Creation Olivier Debré, Tours, and with the collaboration of the Plano Nacional das Artes (Portugal).
Curators:
Helena de Freitas and Bruno Marchand
Text by Lígia Afonso / Plano Nacional das Artes
Selection of online resources Maria de Brito Matias
Learn more about Carla Filipe's works presented in the context of this exhibition:
All I want: The Political
