Exhibition view: WIND DREAMS, Joana Escoval, Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Video Production: Guilherme Proença
Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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In December 2021, Time Magazine announced that Elon Musk had been named Person of the Year . Standing on his pedestal, this hero expresses the paroxysm of the breathless race in which humanity seems to be engaged to escape the perils that his widely-shared vision of the world actively participates in worsening. Despite the current environmental upheavals, the idea of “progress” continues to be envisioned from technological innovations, expansionist impulses and epic tales through which humans attempt to break away from terrestrial limitations, to the point of abandoning the Earth. In her essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” (1986), Ursula Le Guin proposes to overtake this “time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic”, arguing that it is crucial to redefine “technology and science as primarily cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination.” She observes that the stomach was the first container to enable the survival of animal species. By allowing the collection, protection, and circulation of things between individuals and communities, the recipients should be considered the first fundamentally human technology. Rather than the arrow, the sword and the rocket, it is the bottle, the carrier bag, or any other container that should serve as vital technologies for re-evaluating our relationship with the Earth, and beyond.
Joana Escoval, The pledge of fire: to return all things purified, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 143 x 18,5 x 21,5 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The pledge of fire: to return all things purified, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 143 x 18,5 x 21,5 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The pledge of fire: to return all things purified, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 143 x 18,5 x 21,5 cm. Unique
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Exhibition view: WIND DREAMS, Joana Escoval, Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Joana Escoval’s entire oeuvre is permeated by a meticulous exploration of the impermanence, interconnections, and synergies that take shape in a body of work reduced to essential components. Transient and finely balanced, her sculptures invite us to walk along the edges of human consciousness, enabling a perception of our environment that is more sensed and experienced than looked at. Named after a poem by Gu Cheng, this exhibition refers to the power of the wind to be in contact simultaneously with all the surfaces it touches, translating its pressure into movement and sound. The wind achieves the ultimate dream of connecting terrestrial surfaces and all bodies in unison. It immerses us in the discrete currents that flow through a system of ‘vital technologies’ composed of metal and clay sculptures kissed by the blaze. Uprooted (semi-)containers float in the exhibition space, receptive to the movements of bodies in the gallery; the combined cadences of exhalations; the sudden bursts caused by a door, a window, or a few interstices; the note emitted by the breath passing through a flute modulating the wind or the imperceptible energies channeling through metal conductors. The whole room is activated by the power of the deep and steady current of shared respiration that pierces the walls, ceilings and floors. Flowing, shaking, vibrating, infra-thin gusts combine all the particles present in the exhibition space, and beyond.
Joana Escoval, It dreams that it’s always waking, 2022. Fusion of metals (brass), glass, air. 40 x 47 x 11 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, It dreams that it’s always waking, 2022. Fusion of metals (brass), glass, air. 40 x 47 x 11 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The sound was hot as a color inside, 2022. Gold, fusion of metals (brass), air. 134 x 111,5 x 43 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The sound was hot as a color inside, 2022. Gold, fusion of metals (brass), air. 134 x 111,5 x 43 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The sound was hot as a color inside, 2022. Gold, fusion of metals (brass), air. 134 x 111,5 x 43 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, The sound was hot as a color inside, 2022 (detail). Gold, fusion of metals (brass), air. 134 x 111,5 x 43 cm. Unique
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Wind is an ideal vehicle for carrying the elements of a narrative from one container to another. The earth sculptures are made in collaboration with a master craftsman from clay skillfully taken from the soils of the Alentejo, where Joana Escoval spent part of her teenage years. Soils which, in recent years, have been haunted again by the intensification of industrial monoculture. As a result, these sculptures connect with a region where the land has been rapidly losing its nutrients due to over-exploitation. Some areas have become contemporary symbols of ‘matricides’ as conjured by Malcom Ferdinand to describe the territories deeply distorted by the breakdown of the age-old connections between humans and their motherland . These considerations are recurrent in Joana Escoval’s work, notably with Beings that accept and embrace the growth of other beings (2007 — ) when she transplanted century-old olive trees from the Alentejo to Lisbon’s botanical garden. Once part of large olive groves, the trees were brutally uprooted to allow for the installation of intensive production systems. In the botanical garden, the roots had to adapt to their new soil and her purpose was to observe the progressive coexistence of these trees and their new biotope, taking a long-term perspective.
Joana Escoval, We do not work alone. To do the work and let it go, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 106,5 x 54 x 40 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, We do not work alone. To do the work and let it go, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 106,5 x 54 x 40 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, Flowers powder the air around and settle on our arms, eyes and hair, 2022. Fusion of metals (brass), air. 208 x 139 x 87 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, Flowers powder the air around and settle on our arms, eyes and hair, 2022. Fusion of metals (brass), air. 208 x 139 x 87 cm. Unique
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Exhibition view: WIND DREAMS, Joana Escoval, Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Joana Escoval, According to its own hopes, it grows, 2022. Fusion of metals (brass), sulfur, silver, air. 241 x 228 x 113 cm. Unique
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Exhibition view: WIND DREAMS, Joana Escoval, Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Joana Escoval, Bodies rest. It descends and combines with water, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 168 x Ø 20 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, It arises not from any cause but from the cooperation of many (Earth), 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 125 x 43,5 x 37,5 cm. Unique
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Like a stomach, the earth needs constant nourishment to function and to allow the flora of this biotope to develop and survive. Through the porosity of their unglazed surface, these bodies of clay evoke the capacity of living organisms to adapt and evolve softly on their shells. Depending on the conditions, their breathing skin can become a conducive ground for lichens, mosses or other micro-organisms. The wind inspirits the system in which each organ, each occurrence, each parasite occupies a vital role to maintain the survival of this organism. A biodiversity that offers a breeding ground from which it is possible to re-enchant the world, according to different rhythms of growth. Wind Dreams is part of this desire to refine and renew our perception of the Earth. Like a dream that envisions the unthinkable complexity that binds human and nonhuman beings to the earth, and beyond. It composes a system of timeless vital technologies, not in the Promethean projection, but in an essentially earthly, spiritual and non-heroic anchor. Coming from the soil, serving as soil, and returning to a soil to feed it. Extinction and birth appear in the same breath.
— Joël Vacheron
Joana Escoval, Ash and fire were mixing in midair with the rain, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 120 x 38 x 29 cm. Unique
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Exhibition view: WIND DREAMS, Joana Escoval, Galeria Vera Cortês, 2022
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Joana Escoval, Ash and fire were mixing in midair with the rain, 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 120 x 38 x 29 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval, It arises not from any cause but from the cooperation of many (Earth), 2022. Earth, water, fire, air. 125 x 43,5 x 37,5 cm. Unique
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Joana Escoval (1982) lives and works in Lisbon. Her practice circumscribes both visual and aural in the form of sculpture, collective walks, video installations, and printed matter.
A selection of her exhibitions and projects includes: I am Molten Matter (solo show) S.M.A.K. Museum, Ghent (2021); Nothing is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation, curated by Anna Daneri and Lorenzo Giusti, GAMeC Museum, Bergamo (2021); Strange Attractor, curated by Margarida Mendes, Pavilhão Branco, Lisboa (2021); Mutações. The Last Poet (solo show), curated by Pedro Lapa, Museum Colecção Berardo, Lisbon (2020); We do not work alone (solo project), Fiorucci Art Trust, London (2019); 11ª Biennal D’Art Leandre Cristòfol, curated by Julia Morandeira, Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida (2019); De Collectie (1). Highlights for a Future, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2019); The sun lovers (solo show), Tenderpixel, London (2018); Transmissions from the Etherspace, curated by João Laia, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2017); I will go where I don’t belong / Volcano Extravaganza, curated by Milovan Farronato and Camille Henrot, Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli (2016); I forgot to go to school yesterday (solo show), Kunsthalle Lissabon and Kunsthalle Tropical, Iceland (2016); Lichens Never Lie (solo show), La Criée Centre for Contemporary Art, Rennes (2016); The lynx knows no boundaries, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris (2015); Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2014).
She won the BES Revelação Prize in 2012 (Serralves Museum) and was nominated for the EDP Foundation New Artists Prize in 2015, in Portugal. She received a fellowship from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and FLAD Foundation in 2013.
Escoval participated in art residencies, including the Fiorucci Art Trust Residency in Stromboli in 2015, and RU, in New York in 2013/14 and Halfhouse, Barcelona in 2011.
In collaboration with the artist Nuno da Luz, they released the album “Beasts of Gravity”, a double LP released by Vinyl Factory, London in 2019.
