Artist statement
My name is Filipa Mesquita and I have been a puppeteer since 2002, after training in theater and specializing in object theater in the city of Porto, Portugal.
Memory, human relationships, and the transformations of affections are interior concerns, cultural experiences between different spaces such as urban environments in contrast with rural environments are concerns that, transported to the scene, become guides for dramaturgical work.
Throughout these years, at local, national and international level, there has been a great personal interest in making contact between cultural and heritage universes, but above all in being able to find the link in the interpersonal relationships that each society standardizes for itself. I work with ideas and intentions that create the feeling of super power, the micro and the macro, the repetition of shape and figure and the transposition of emotional premises to symbolic, abstract, sometimes concrete or very classically structured objects, in the sense of dialoguing with the audience that observes, listens and apprehends the collective emotional sensitive material that is molded between the relationship of the stage and the spectator.
Individual processes are always the result of social research, called, indirectly or directly, to the present participation or support of the communities on which the concern and artistic obsession are based. I collaborate with several art directors who, through the construction of objects, structures or stage machines allow us to communicate in a symbolic, poetic way and crossing the dimension of thought and emotional affectation. Over these years, I have been presenting different proposals, very based on the enhancement of creation, converging its mobility and structuring for different audiences. I’ve also worked with different groups of seniors and children as well as specific groups such as amateur musicians or even within artistic challenge projects with scientists. I also work with teams from areas concerning heritage, history, archaeologists, biologists, always within the theatrical framework. I love working with young audiences, whether they are teenagers, children or babies. They are sometimes called upon to support dramaturgy research and from the results of their visual language, sound impressions, historical narratives, specialized knowledge, bases emerge for the process of artistic creation.
However, throughout these, I have been working on both creative processes integrated in heritage educational services, such as castles, monasteries, museums, interpretive centers, as well as through continuous and diversified training. I have elaborated artistic creations with the community, or in a closed community, as for example youth groups and senior groups, as well as free participation without institutional ties at the invitation of festivals, especially theater. It’s a process that brings me great personal satisfaction because I believe in the generating capacity for creative transformation that these projects have.
My work is thus this reflection on society and its interconnections, whether we have to point out one side of a positive environment, or when the environment where creation is projected has many challenges to be overcome without having deep social problems.
The creation of artists is not closed in on itself but goes beyond the dimension of space and is thus reflected in my entire creative process, even if sometimes the stage is devoid of actors and only full of symbols, metaphors and objects.