Open Studio Session: Have You Seen My View?!

Sand with a body of water makes a beach, trees and bushes that cover a large area make a forest, and an atelier transforms the room into a place to create art. A sofa and a coffee table make it a living room, a bedroom becomes a place to sleep, and a kitchen to cook. We call it a home. But, where is home?! Home is where we feel like ourselves the most. Home is where our things are! Things; stuff that we collect intentionally to assist us through our everyday life, to personalize our surroundings and distinguish it from others, to remind us the story beyond the object, to identify, and perhaps reveal information about the past. What differentiates it with an art collection is that it’s not gathered for contemplation, or placed in an appropriate context for that purpose.

Places and things can be dead or alive in our eyes depending on the way we see them, even though they’re inanimate; they come with a history and a background, a story that we might not find out about for their disability to discourse. How would the story unfold then, who’s the narrator?! Who’s to portray the path that a letter took to reach the bottom drawer of the gray metal table in a corner of the white studio and sit still folded in half?! An unfinished painting left in the corner from the former artist living in the studio. And the studio that used to be the classroom of seven-year-olds. Moments that become insignificant once they’ve passed by, but quite impressive as they were happening in the present tense, as they were being lived.

‘Have you seen my view?!’ an open studio session held in June, 2018, in RAIZVANGUARDA art center, Bordeiro, Gois, Portugal. During this session, ‘The Street’ which a short animation was screened and the process of creating the film was showcased. ‘Lazy Letter’ was exhibited alongside ‘Lonely Places’, and ‘Local Time’ which is an idea for a film, and yet work-in-progress, was presented to the audience.