“Memory is the best trait of human beings, we are always transported by our memory,” says Mito Elias. And what the artist proposes to viewers of his painting exhibition at the Old Courthouse Building is a visit to the memories of his homeland, Cape-Verde.
The general name of the paintings is “Sistal” which means “whatever you imagine.” Elias is a lover of words and languages, especially the Cape-Verdean creole. In a triptyque dedicated to the marble games of his childhood, he was inspired by the rituals, words and alliterations of the Cape-Verdean children when playing with their hand-made plastic marbles: kurubaki (starting point), dó-entró (the sung words to choose the child who throws the marble first) and mixote (when the game returns to its beginning).
And there are also references to other journeys the artist has made, including to China and Macau. “The affective components always mark what I do, especially in my work,” Elias says.
The artist previously showed his work in Macau back in 2006. At that time he met his cousin, the late journalist Elsa Dias (who lived and worked in Macau and passed away last year, after a courageous battle with cancer) with whom he shared a fascination for the local Macanese creole, Patuá, and for Chinese characters.
“Even though I cannot speak or write Chinese, the entangled characters are graphically very beautiful and many of the works I show here have been influenced by the trip I made here in 2006,” he reveals.
This exhibition is therefore aptly dedicated to the memory of Elsa Dias, who introduced him to Macau, a city he now loves.
“Macau has a lot of concentrated energy, a lot of movement, the city doesn’t stop and I love it.”
Angolan-born Lino Damião visited Macau for the first time this year to show his work during the first Macau Literary Festival. His work encompasses a series of techniques: engraving, photography, serigraphy, painting and “paint-engraving” (a combinaton of painting and engraving) and one can see samples of all these techniques in his Macau exhibition.
“This work has elements from the 18 provinces of Angola, especially the photos,” Damiãos says. “My painting is the the result of the city where I live, Luanda, and what I see in the city everyday.”
Damião’s artistic journey started when he was very little, surrounded by photos taken by his father, a photographer for 40 years for the Jornal de Angola (Angola’s national newspaper). But photography was not his first choice, because “it was my father’s work”. His artistic sense was awoken by engraving, which he started to develop, based on photos taken by his father. He later evolved to painting, after having worked in the atteliers of older masters like the Angolan Victor Teixeira (a.k.a. Viteix) who taught him to work with acrylics. He now works with all these techniques and divides his time between Lisbon and Luanda. But Daimião is always open to new techniques.
“I vary, I experiment, I could have done an installation or a sculpture for this exhibition,” he says, adding that his work is “very manual and hand-crafted, to avoid excessive reproduction.”
When CLOSER spoke with Damião, he commented that Macau was clearly a source of inspiration, but still developing inside. “If I think about Asia and artwork, I would probably like to work with rice paper or a tree shell.”