O corpo que se desgasta (The body that wears out)

For nine months, PADA was a space for reflection and experimentation for the three artists selected for the Bolsa Barreiro 2025, supported by the municipality. Rejecting urgency and pressure to produce results, O corpo que se desgasta (The body that wears out) now makes public the work of each of the artists who, over the course of three months, occupied the studio in the west wing of the building. As such, it is an exhibition-process, where doubt is legitimised as a tool and failure as material. A code that, in the light of a liberal economic model, reads as idle or inefficient, because having time to think, having time to test, has become a rare gem – capable of attracting birds that, in golden times, would fly over the industrial park in search of shiny gears, and who knows if it wasn't the magpies that caused their disappearance.

The programme began with Francisco Pinto de Almeida. Between January and March, the artist investigated the sensuality and transparency of latex, drawing analogies with living organisms – fragile and luminous. Technical failure cocoons highlight the tensions between the human and the mechanical, between skin and metal, between sweat and the oil of working machines. Between April and June, Alëna Koleso observed the city and its context in the industrial territory – also as a body. A body marked by use, personal experience, fatigue and persistence, mapping all these imperfections on blue panels recovered from an old office. Finally, between July and September, Inês Encarnação explored the intensity of the dawn light, in contrast to the lucid reveries of nocturnal phenomena. The “photography-paintings”, in shades of ochre and gold, reveal diffuse presences, free of context or narrative. 

This was the common principle shared by Francisco Pinto de Almeida, Alëna Koleso and Inês Encarnação: the counter-rhythm provided by the workspace, or studio. That, and the setting sun which, depending on the time of year, entered low and warm, clear and growing, long and direct.  

Frederico Vicente