Solo exhibition

Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon

20.05 - 07.09.2024

Esteemed Comrades, following the resounding success of the New York iteration of Animal Farm – presented at 99 Canal earlier this year – João Maria Gusmão’s solo 16 mm exhibition, will, at long last, open at Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon, curated by Marco Bene, on the 20th of May.

Animal Farm entices the observer on a visual odyssey exalted by pastoral solace, animist minstrelsy and metaphysical riddles – ghosts, ghouls and goblins – offering fleeting glimpses of an alterity existing between techne and poiesis, the human and the non-human, the nocturnal and the diurnal. Through over fifteen new 16 mm film projections we are invited to explore the latest toils in a long-lasting inquiry into analogue means and analogue concepts. A journey towards an eco-friendly estrangement from the extractivist rural landscape.

While one might liken Animal Farm to Orwell’s fairy story, Gusmão concurrently unfurls a structuralist conundrum: the spectral nature of the cinematographic medium itself, pointing us towards a “weirding” phenomenology; a hauntology of sorts – the study of the nature of what lies between being and non-being among domesticated and wild ranch critters – a vicarious ontology!

More information

© Bruno Lopes