Carla Filipe: In my own language I am independente
Museu de Serralves
24 MAR - 10 SEP 2023
Carla Filipe (Vila Nova da Barquinha, Portugal, 1973) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice critically explores the relationship between art objects, culture and activism. Anchored in drawing, personal experiences and in the concept of autobiography as an experimental archive of contemporaneity, Filipe’s creative process is the outcome of appropriating artefacts and documents that build a singular form of social portrait and, simultaneously, self-portraiture.
The title of the exhibition is taken from an inscription of an image that belongs to the artist’s photographic archive, blending two languages — English and Portuguese — a recurring feature of Filipe’s work. Shunning all prejudice and embracing maximum freedom, the artist builds a platform for creation and analysis that examines past and present political, economic, social and cultural transformations without geographic boundaries.
By applying anthropological methodologies, Filipe observes, collects, interviews and documents the traces of individual and collective narratives, questioning conventional discursivity on the recent past and on the present in an idiosyncratic way. In doing so, the artist investigates transversal concepts such as territory, property, memory, identity or representation. These are the themes of Filipe’s survey exhibition at the galleries of the Museum, the mezzanine of the Library and the terrace of the restaurant of the Serralves Museum, spanning two decades of work.
Carla Filipe: In my own language I am independente is organised by Fundação de Serralves and curated by Marta Moreira de Almeida, Deputy Director of the Museum. The EDP Foundation is patron of this exhibition.
