Photo Credits: Bruno Simão
Artist statement
ANA BORRALHO (Lagos, Portugal-1972), JOÃO GALANTE (Luanda, Angola-1968)
Since 2002, Ana Borralho & João Galante are a creative duo, in transdisciplinary performing arts, exploring heterogeneous concepts by uniting distinct, consolidated and emerging discourses and methods. Art in direct relationship with non-artistic life.
«The beauty horizon of Ana Borralho & João Galante is easily reached: a horizon of acceptance, of personal change in the face of someone who is ‘other,’ encouraging careful observation before any judgment, and participating in an experience, not just witnessing it.»
Rui Catalão
We met while studying Fine Arts at AR.CO (Lisbon).
While actors and co-creators we have worked regularly in the 90’s with the physical theater group Olho (Almada, Portugal).
Since 2002 we create together on performance art, dance, installation, photography, sound and video art, creating transdisciplinar projects that explore hybrid forms and different practices. We work with the belief that art is part of the society, of its changes and problems. It must be active and transformative and exist in direct communication with people.
In these last years our performances associate artistic formation processes to the creative work, including workshops or auditions addressed to local communities in order to select people (professional and non-professional) to participate in our performances. For example: WORLD OF INTERIORS, UNTITLED STILL LIFE, SEXY-MF, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, ATLAS -a performance that gathers 100 people of different professions and ages with distinct motivations and personal experiences, and more recently TRIGGER OF HAPINESS and FAMILY ROMANCE OR THE AUGMENTED REALITY. Most of our works are performed by non-professionals, which amplifies the relationship with the public and the communities.
Part of our continuous research is exploring the border/relationship between spectators and the pieces; we seek to integrate the audience into the time and space of the performances and to identify the tensions between art and the codes that govern society.
Our work aims, in general, to reflect and act upon what surrounds us, what worries us. On the other hand, the reality that surrounds us in each of our projects acts as a motor to conceptually advance the work.
Since 2004 our works have been presented at national and international festivals in Portugal, France, Spain, Switzerland, Scotland, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Canada, Austria and Slovenia.
We are founding members of the CasaBranca Cultural Association and we are responsible for the Artistic Direction of the Transdisciplinary Festival of Contemporary Arts – Verão Azul in Lagos, south Portugal.
CASABRANCA CA
casaBranca is a cultural association located in Lagos/Portugal, that gathers a group of artists and professionals from different areas and with distinct experiences. It is a space of interdisciplinary cultural action that aims to promote the investigation and the transmission of contemporary art and culture. The purpose is, therefore, to create and to reinforce the networks with the territory and its cultural communities, exploring different layouts of exhibition and transmission of the contemporary creation.
In addition to the work of the artists Ana Borralho & João Galante, casaBranca also develops pedagogical projects and produces the performative and visual arts festival Verão Azul in Lagos, Portugal.
Ana Borralho & João Galante / CasaB has been developing a project which has acquired growing relevance and visibility, consistently implementing work which combines the local, regional, national and international dimensions. It has permanently sought an extended articulation with the territory in its various scales, investing in the intensification and strengthening of relations with the territorial, social, artistic and cultural environment in which it operates and, simultaneously, strengthening the establishment of decentralized and extended production networks. By establishing partnerships and cooperative relations with municipalities, schools, theaters, associations and structures of artistic creation and diffusion, its implementation has enabled the intensification of the articulation of activities and projects, a greater openness and diversification of contents and a more accentuated and heterogeneous widening of the relationship with various territories, communities and publics. In articulation with the work developed in the Algarve region, the national and international dimension of Ana Borralho & João Galante’s creations should be highlighted. They currently occupy a prominent place on the Portuguese contemporary art scene and have been present at important international festivals and have been co-produced by prestigious institutions in Portugal and abroad.