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ROOMS 9, 10 AND 11
Leisure School
Leisure School presents, for the first
time, in Portugal an important body of work by the
artist Priscila Fernandes (1981) in which she invites us to reflect
on leisure. Specifically designed for the CIAJG, the exhibition covers her
recent series - "Never Touch the Ground" (2020), "Labour Series"
(2018-2020) and "Free. To do Whatever We" (2018).
For the ancient Greeks, scholē (school)
meant “leisure” and practicing leisure was associated to observation and
discussion; the term also referred to those who thought in a community,
something that the artist now finds to be necessary and urgent. The meaning of
the word “leisure” however has transformed over time, deviating from its
original meaning, and migrated towards the ideas of “free time” vs “production”
especially in the 20th century in the context of the western modern-capitalist
project. Given the current algorithmicization of life, in which a new app is
developed at every moment in time to maximise and monitor our improving
productivity, what space does “leisure” occupy in our contemporary world.
Different
pedagogies for studying leisure are explored across the three rooms of this
exhibition. In one a fictional TV presenter tries to prove the relationship
between the development of leisure and the emergence of abstract art. In
another grand
artistic gestures are exercised while wearing roller skates. And lastly, a room
where chains are broken (in a kind of “challenge” of liberation), are we
“Free. To do
Whatever We?”
Apoio à produção
FOR ALL AGES
Priscila Fernandes (1981, Portugal) is a visual artist and the Head of Department of the Bachelor of Fine Arts at ArtEZUniversity of the Arts, Arnhem, The Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited widely. Recent exhibitions include 32nd São Paulo Biennial; The Book of Aesthetic Education of the Modern School, Foundation Joan Miró, Barcelona; Back to the sandbox: Art and Radical Pedagogy, Reykjavik Art Museum; Playgrounds, Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid; Learning for Life, Henie-Onstad, Oslo; 12 Contemporâneos, Museu de Serralves, Porto; Those bastards in caps come to have fun and relax by the seaside instead of continuing to work in the factory, at TENT, Rotterdam; and This is the time. This is the Record of the Time at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam.