Inês Coelho da Silva

There are many ways in which a portrait can occur. An object can represent someone/something specific, but a person can see themselves represented in an object that was not necessarily made to depict them. Portrait objects are, therefore, not only messengers but receptors themselves, which influence and are influenced by other messengers/receptors. Two bodies, such as a sculptural object and a spectator, may conduct a variety of intangible conversations that cannot be anticipated, as they both take part in constructing a message that is only effective within their own dialogue. The independence that my objects acquire turn them into reliable portraits of the viewer’s intimate thoughts, emotions, desires, and fears, as they are not compromised to a single reading or an explanation. The message is not within the object but in the conversation with the other. For a piece to be broad enough to accommodate the other and allow them to enter it and modify it, it must feel slightly uncomfortable for both the maker and each observer. The perfect completion of the object – and the sense of relief of considering it “finished”, whatever that might mean – would only feel so for one person, one specific identity, and therefore deny all others. By getting closer to what one might consider complete, it would distance itself from another person’s notion of complete. Instead of solved pieces of work, like monologues, I am aiming to produce space for a dialogue, a discussion. My work arises from my autobiographical concerns but only exists when the other’s personal narratives populate the objects with various readings, interpretations, and sensations. It is uncomfortably incomplete, to be completed in ones’ mind and body. It could be, and yet, it is not. It is almost, but not even. And so, there is room for the other to add, to remove, to reiterate, to react, to imagine, to project, to reflect.

The food elements I combine with textiles and wood, such as spices, seeds, grains, are often overlooked. Although they are very familiar to most of us (even if in the quality of collective memory), there is a strangeness in seeing them individually, apart from the context of a group or a meal. Here, they conquer a new context: the context of their own presence. They become shapes, shadows, smells, weights, pendulums, supports. They change with time, ageing, shrinking, disappearing, but also with physical proximity. While the observer gets closer to encounter the details, their breath interferes with the piece’s stability and configuration, even if momentarily. These objects are physically fragile and metaphysically vulnerable. Words do not demystify that physical encounter or replace it. Here, “to know” can never overlap “to feel”, and that is the primordial request. To feel, to care, to notice, to touch, to like, to hate, to sense, to remember, to love, to react, to reject, to enjoy, to forget, to imagine, to alter, to pretend, to do, to undo, to knot, to unknot.