Inês Botelho
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
Although related to space, architecture and landscape, the work of Inês Botelho is eminently sculptural. Her technical exploration and challenging of materials such as lime, clay, wood and metal give results that are as precise as they are impossible.
Based on previously formulated designs and drawing on the experience and collaboration of traditional craftspeople, Botelho alters the qualities and physical states of raw materials in order to elude and subvert elementary universal phenomena and concepts such as mass, movement, shadow, gravity, orientation and time.
19 degree rotation, translation and lead (2013) by Inês BotelhoOriginal Source: Courtesy of the Artist
19 degree rotation, translation and lead, 2013
Clay, whitewash on clay and floor, iron (plate and chain welded together)
125 x 240 x 197 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
In drawing as in sculpture, her formal poetics are developed from actions based on vocabularies of geometry (line, reflection, transposition and rotation), architecture (wall, tent, plumb, stake and inhabitant) and geography (border, map, landscape and territory). Her works are drawings in space that are formalised as unusual proposals for interaction.
They call into question the paradigms of world order such as cosmic and planetary cycles, and destabilise the relational dynamics between people, objects and spaces, inducing an unrealistic perception of scale and perspective and undermining the notion of common space.
Others and the same roling objects in the landscape (2014 and 2020) by Inês BotelhoOriginal Source: Courtesy of the Artist
Others and the same roling objects in the landscape, 2014 and 2020
Indian ink and water on cotton paper
158 x 114 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
From the top, a Cycle (2016) by Inês BotelhoOriginal Source: Courtesy of the Artist
From the top, a Cycle, 2016
Clays, pigments, bronze and iron
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the Artist
Learn more about the artist:
Inês Botelho – Website
«LADRÃO DE BARULHOS», Inês Botelho
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 Inês Botelho's works presented in the context of this exhibition:
All I want: The Word
