Individual residencies / Andorra
SÉRGIO LEITAO
From Monday, 1 July 2024 to Monday, 15 July 2024
Bio
He has a degree and PhD in visual arts (ESAP /University of Vigo). His work spans many areas of knowledge, from art and architecture to literature, philosophy and history. He creates intertwined stories by researching and collecting images and objects, and establishes dialogues among the specific contexts, public and private institutional archives and his own collection of documents.
His work has been on display in contemporary art spaces such as Viafarini; Edicola Radetzky; Brera Academy, in Milan; MACRO, in Rome; House of Arts, in Brno; Vasarely Museum, in Budapest; Palazzo Bembo, in Venice; HGK, in Karlsruhe; Centercourt, in Munich; KUB, in Leipzig; Vasistas, in Dresden; MAGT, in Athens; Izolyatsia, in Kyiv; LLLLLL and Notgalerie, in Vienna; Ville Belleville, in Paris; MCA, in Valletta; Rosalux, in Berlin, and WCAC, in Cork.
Project
Almanach – Artist’s book
Almanach will involve both research and practical work to create an art installation that creatively redefines relationship dynamics in cultural and geographic contexts.
Although Sérgio Leitao tends to show his work as mixed-technique installations, he often creates stand-alone pieces using different techniques, such as drawing and painting. Almanach is a project under way that was presented for the first time in a Biennial of Contemporary Arts in Portugal and spread to Italy. To continue the series at La Massana, he will start by doing background research that will take shape in individual drawings and an artist’s book. Both will be a compilation of visual references, as a way to build a portrait of the city, the surrounding landscapes and the communities that live there. "I hope this project mobilises the public on pathways to alternative collective and personal mappings
My proposal for the Faber Andorra programme, entitled ALMANACH (usually a publication grouping various subjects and related stories), was an extension of an ongoing project previously presented in Portugal and Italy. Developed site-specifically in La Massana, it involved contextual research materialized into two activities: a collaboration with a local artist (DOUBLE VIEWS) and a workshop (DRAWING IN CONTEXT: AN ARTIST BOOK). Both projects attempted to unfold a compilation of visual references, so as to build a portrait of Andorra’s social, cultural and physical landscapes.
DOUBLE VIEWS, that I collectively developed with the La Massana-based artist AnitaMaría, led to two drawing projects (75 drawings in total), overlaying both artists’ practices in the same sheets of 30x42 cm paper. The first of these had the goal of establishing an initial interaction between us and it involved the creation of a set of drawings in transition between abstraction and figuration. This first project was presented as a drawings’ panel (27 drawings) and as an artist book (23 drawings). The second project within DOUBLE VIEWS developed according to the “cadavre exquis” technique - a method by which a collection of images and words (drawings, in this case) can be collectively created. In this process AnitaMaría and I contributed to the same drawing compositions by being allowed to see only the ending lines and colours of each other’s previous drawing, in order to do our own contribution to the end result. This technique (which is able to produce quite unexpected results) was invented by the French surrealists and is similar to an old parlour game called "consequences", in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for further contribution. DOUBLE VIEWS´ second project materialized in 25 drawings (70x100 and 30x42 cm) in individual wall panels, an artist book and also exhibited on a table. DOUBLE VIEWS’ two projects were presented together as a mixed-media installation unfolding through a subtle game of correspondences between graphic, sculptural, sonic and videographic elements, forwarded to a place of intersection of different narratives.
DRAWING IN CONTEXT: AN ARTIST BOOK, the second activity planned for my Faber Andorra programme, was a workshop developed in collaboration with the audience. It took place at the Sala d'exposicions del Govern d'Andorra for 3 hours and it involved 12 fifteen-minute exercises on contextual and collaborative drawing practices. The goals of this activity were to practice informal drawing through the surrounding area and in ‘studio’ context, while addressing potential local references and also to organize the results of this working process into an artist book. The subjects were approached in all stages between figuration and abstraction through this drawing practice of a relatively free nature. Two artist books were produced (with a total of 240 15x21 cm drawings, accomplished collectively).
Overall, this experience in the scope of Faber Andorra’s programme was an important opportunity for the deepening of my artistic process. It allowed me to learn from and contribute to a critical assessment of issues relevant to contemporary art practices. It was a chance to reflect upon a wide diversity of perspectives and to establish productive dialogues that fostered new beginnings, spurred new energies and relationships and helped build a whole other game of correspondences between art and life, creating alternative personal and collective mappings that will certainly lead to future projects in Andorra and elsewhere.
