LAvAmAr [Lava+Sea+Air+To Love] and mEmOriA by Miguel Leitão Jardim

 

LAvAmAr  

Lava+Sea+Air+To Love

O continente desaparecido | The missing continent

Of the finitude of the land and the black rocks; on those gaps I imagine the missing continent and the cities of men, where new horizons are reached through creativity.
From the gaps of the black rock, I see the History behind me and Art in the future.

The series of 10 photographs is about the gaps – represented by the black emptiness of the basaltic rocks – that life in a small island brings to those who aspire knowledge, the kind you only reach through travel and contact with other human societies.

So felt some people born in the island, but to whom the islander condition was never enough. People like António Aragão, born in Saint Vincent, in 1921, who was a man of rich creativity, restless, controversial, nonconformist, even sometimes eccentric, and that left his personal and indelible presence wherever he went. It was hard not to notice him when he was at work, whether in the research of history and ethnography, or when he sculpted, painted or wrote. Painter, sculptor, historian, researcher, writer and poet. As an artist, he participated in numerous activities, projects, interventions, exhibits, in several corners of the World. The island wasn't enough for him, but he returned to it. And filled many gaps.

 

(Inspirado por / Inspired by António Aragão).#  

Miguel Leitão Jardim, Funchal, 2022.

# https://www.aragao.org 

 

 

 

mEmOriA / mEmOrY 

68-86

 

 

The latin word “memoria” means “the one that remembers”. As everything else, memory is not perfect. A certain event witnessed by several people will have as many versions as the people that witnessed it. Because we tend to forget the details and to retain from the experience only what each one of us considered to be essential. And each one of us considers different things as more important. Long term memory is stored in a sporadic way: not being possible to store all information, elements like color, sound, smell, image, work as associative elements that occur to the spirit as a result of lived experiences. For these reasons, this project is shown with different formats.

The 10 photograph series was built with familiar locations of my childhood and youth, since 1968, when I was born and 1986, when I went to study in Lisbon, using only those associative elements that endure in the memory – like the red stonework, the Portuguese sidewalk and others – with all the gaps in between.

Miguel Leitão Jardim, Funchal, 2022.