EIRAS
in
BIENAL DA MAIA 2021
Bienal da Maia 2021, 2021.
Curated by José Maia.
Two works were selected for group exhibition Map of the people (2021) and And if we were dust? (2021). Another piece was the tend/paradise that was created throughout a collaboration with José Oliveira in his exhibition Offside Paradise (2020).
Besides, I was invited to envolve a project with the community. The proposal was to create a piece specifically for the exhibitio Bienal da Maia 2021.
With that in mind, I worked together with the local association Associação de Artes Criativas da Maia, which is a group of around ten women that meet regulary to evolve manual works, far from job and family.
During two month we met frequently to create the main piece -EIRAS.
Throughout our time together we had the chance to fusion different perspectives on how to work with textile and it was a really beautiful experience to see all of those wonderful women to start to draw and create freely, gaining confidence and trust to do it. All of the material we used were “left-overs” from home, found or recycled. The draft fot the big painel is centered around the work of women and how it has been transformed throughout time and how it has changing mental and physical weight and meaning to it. Also there exists a clear focus on the union between women. Linguistically, “eiras” is the part of the word that determines that certain functions are executed by women, like leiteiras (women selling milk) or galinheiras (women selling chickens) and it also means in Portuguese language a plane wide place, mostly made of stone in circular form, where people went to lay out collected wheat in order to sperate and dry it. Meaning that it also has a reuniting caracter to it, bringing people together. Connecting, overcoming age, social status and education.
Thanks from heart to hearts, from eira to eiras to Florinda Neves. Laura Magalhães, Ilda Martins, Marina Vieira, Esperança Silva, Isabel Magalhães, Ana Cristina Pereira and Rosa Cunha.
some pictures of the process
Graphic Design by Luis Teixeira.