The MAMAC is showcasing Juliào Sarmento until November 30th. This is another reason to abandon the overheated, sun-drenched beaches and head to this museum that never ceases to surprise us.
This is Juliào Sarmento’s first exhibition at M.A.M.A.C. Everything revolves around women, who are his model, muse, and source of inspiration. The exhibition includes everything from small nude portraits to drawings, paintings, and sculptures.
For this Portuguese artist, women are singers, dancers, and above all, enchanting. Women without heads, ballerinas in a ballet infused with Fado and nostalgia, characterize Juliào’s work.
Why without faces? Perhaps because the artist wants to give us the initiative to define this woman, asking who she is? What does she want to tell us? As he explains: “Each piece is a word, a sentence, allowing for interpretation at one’s discretion.”
The video showing the television presenter leads us to question, what will she say? Reveal? And for 90 seconds, we wait. She doesn’t speak, although she is getting ready to, but the long silence is full of meaning, perhaps more so than if she had made a dramatic announcement. Then a foot disappears stealthily behind a door, where is she going? Yes, it’s a woman! A hooded woman contemplating herself in a mirror at the other end of the table. She is alone.
It is probably she who dreams of being illustrious and unknown. There is no contradiction between these two terms: Illustrious unknown! After all, why not. The women of Juliào Sarmento are all dressed in black, in dresses with V-necks, round, low-cut. Then another video with a reverse strip-tease, the woman, a brunette with long hair, the birth of a reimagined Diana, is naked and slowly dresses with measured gestures.
In some ways, the artist, born in Lisbon in 1948, expresses the climate of his country before the Carnation Revolution. The absent or hidden faces symbolize the absence of freedom, censorship. At least, that’s the opinion of one visitor to the exhibition. Why not, after all, Juliào Sarmento invites us to interpret his work in our own way.
These are words, phrases, let’s unite them, separate them, we can make them say whatever we want since it’s our own emotions that the artist has stimulated here. Our desires, dreams, and senses are engaged. The spectator is a bit of a voyeur. This exhibition could be named: The Woman Without a Head or perhaps Woman is the Future of Man. Why was Thank you Sir chosen? A wink or an intent to disorient the audience?
There lies the question, and it’s up to you to answer it. Each with their own answer, their own vision, a bit like commedia dell’arte, the script isn’t written, it’s up to us to write it. In any case, the visitor will be delighted by the numerous references to cinema and literature.
Thierry Jan
