Recetáculo, 2019

Carlos Machado Museum
Walk&Talk, São Miguel, Azores

Rita GT’s work articulates a journey between two important points in the city, connected through a performance that begins at the Town Hall and ends at the Carlos Machado Museum – Convent of Santo André. 

The artist reinterprets the traditional format of a procession, reflecting on its functioning, participants, and organization. By elevating the female condition, she rethinks the patriarchal structure underlying this type of religious and popular manifestation. In this case, a group of women belonging to a fictional sisterhood carry a collection of clay vases and jars through the city, eventually depositing them in a museum space, where they remain as a temporary installation. 

The material (clay) and the format (receptacle – vase/jar) of these objects establish a direct connection between what is carried and the body of the carriers. The idea of the receptacle takes on a form and function that relates to the female condition, celebrating the element that holds and preserves what is precious—whether by invoking a historical perspective, in which these objects safeguarded the household’s sustenance, or by alluding to the female body, which holds the potential to carry and nurture new life. In this way, within the symbolic dimension of the procession, the notion of power is reclaimed into another sphere—a matriarchal one—that generates life and ensures its subsistence. 

The performance involves various members of the local community and develops a choreography accompanied by a soundscape featuring singing and percussion, as well as a visual register that encompasses a new identity, reflected in the banner and attire used. 

The work also includes the presentation of a video exhibited at the Carlos Machado Museum, documenting the process of creating the objects in a pottery workshop and their activation through the procession across the city streets. 

The performance concludes with a ceremony in which the vases, jars, and other elements are deposited, interacting with the video to define the contours of an installation. The installation emerges as a continuation of the performance, with the work conceived across multiple dimensions, questioning the format of the artwork and the place of its presentation—between the event and the object, between the city and the exhibition space. 

— Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues