Joana Rosa

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

Doodles (1995) by Joana RosaOriginal Source: Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto

Joana Rosa bases her work on doodles or scribbles, as she describes them, alluding to the impetuous nature of universal actions such as “breaking a match between your teeth, fiddling with an empty sugar sachet in a café or sucking and biting a pen”.

Doodles (1995) by Joana RosaOriginal Source: Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto

The artist draws in an automatic fashion, favouring form over content. Some drawings end up drenched in detail, fantastical and replete with colour; others, rendered in lead and graphite on tracing paper, are colossal, monumental creations. The latter, in macerated black, stem from the practice of overlapping, concealing and uncovering layers. When we delve deep into them, we uncover mechanical forms, intimate writings and appropriated drawings.

Doodles (1995) by Joana RosaOriginal Source: Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto

Such fragments are crumpled, overlaid, stapled and stuck to the wall at the point of installation, based on a sweeping and highly performative conception of space that is informed by the artist’s past experience as a dancer.

Doodles (1995) by Joana RosaOriginal Source: Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto

Doodles, 1995
Graphite on tracing paper
Variable dimensions
Fundação de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, inv. FS 0236

Doodles (Fragments) (c. 1991-1999) by Joana RosaCalouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Rosa couples her interdisciplinary approach with a penchant for collecting, classifying and cataloguing appropriated objects and texts, creating a veritable archive of actions and notes that map visceral human behaviour.

Doodles (Fragments) (c. 1991-1999) by Joana RosaCalouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Doodles (Fragments), c. 1991-1999
Graphite on tracing paper
201,5 x 189 cm
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – Centro de Arte Moderna, inv. 94DP1719

Credits: Story

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 Joana Rosa's works presented in the context of this exhibition:
All I want: The Space of Writing

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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