February Art
Born in 1997 Porto, Portugal:
Ana Amarante, has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in fine arts with a specialization in Painting, from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and her artistic production intersect ecocentric ethics with the art world. Through metabolic and symbolic transmutations, her work problematizes the symbiotic relationship between man and nature, questioning her own hierarchical condition and refuting polluting production archetypes. From a trajectory that deconstructs the artistic matter as a social agent, she merges the natural space with the technological one, hoping to confront the authenticity of the sustainable syllogism.
"Salagrama"
Leaves, microorganisms, and copper suspended in an iconographic and symbolic space of Hindu divine entities, whose presence was represented by a type of fossilized shell, usually found by the riverside, called a Salagrama. The incorporation of this imagery crossed an idea of timeless preservation of Nature, observable in the skeletonization of the leaves, with an anthropomorphic transcendental experience, found in the drawing, symbolic of the fossil, sewn on the surface.
The work was exhibited in a place that can only be accessed on foot and where a watercourse passes, which dries according to weather conditions. The place is close to a well-frequented trail, on the mountain of Valongo, which allows interaction with spectators. Its orange spheroid draws walkers closer to it, turning them into participative spectators, and the experience of the work results in the voluntary performativity of its spectator.
The work's self-destructive experience takes place on the conception of time and the cycle of Nature, where matter undergoes physical transformations according to Nature's possession of its resources until it restores a vital cyclical return point.
Nature is transformed into an immersive gallery, where she curates the work and cooperates in the creation, thus also being a participative agent. From this event, a dialogue is generated between Nature and the spectator about the natural cycle of objects, in which it is demonstrated how ephemerality can be regenerating and opens up for other forms of life to originate from its biodegradable essence.