Arco Lisboa (Opening) 2019
C.O.N.S.T.R.U.C.T.I.O.N. (Arco Lisboa 2019 Opening Prize)
C.o.n.s.t.r.u.c.t.i.o.n. is an installation that updates the disruptive power of Tiago Borges’ (Luanda, 1973) work and the dystopian gestures that have been marking his artistic production. The use of low-fi materials, the availability in approximating opposite references (almost surreally) or the deconstruction of pop iconography and politics of African independence movements, refer to previous projects, such as AfroUfo, that Tiago Borges and Yonamine presented at the Bienal de São Paulo (2014). However, if then, the Ufologist fiction prevailed, here, the commentary is addressed to the ruin of modernity and history itself, configured first as tragedy and then as farce (Marx).
If the world goes on in crisis, history has not become progress, capital has not suppressed inequalities, and God died (Notre-Dame burned), and now what? Instead of feeding the neurosis guilt that per passes today’s West, Tiago Borges’ artistic gesture meets the hybrid and the impure as marks of non-canonical modernity processes developed outside the axis Europe-North America. “Purity is a myth” or “I embody revolt” by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, the irony inscribed in Tiago Borges’ work, the poetic struggle of so many other artists (musicians, hackers, craftsmen, designers) of his generation, celebrate the relationship between mixture and modernity leading us to understand the specificities of histories reversing History.
C.o.n.s.t.r.u.c.t.i.o.n. gathers signs disjointed of their official meaning and responds ironically to the idea of memorial or monument. Heraldics, QR Codes, political “souvenirs” and banners resemble spoils of a battle, deepen the artist’s vocabulary and his creative freedom, going far beyond any strictly political meaning.
This is the impure homeland of Tiago Borges. Between utopia and joy, blending vital energy with challenging the norm…. C.o.n.s.t.r.u.c.t.i.o.n.
Marta Mestre, Maio, 2019
