Photo credits: Tânia Carvalho
Artist statement
My name is Matthieu Grade Ehrlacher and I was born in Figeac, France in 1984. I have dual nationality, Portuguese and French. I moved to Portugal, Vila Nova de Santo André, in 1989.
I came to Lisbon in 2004 to study at Escola de Jazz Luiz Villas-Boas (2004-2009). From 2010 to 2012, I undertook the “Study, Research and Choreographic Creation Program” at Forum Dança (PEPCC) at Lisbon.
I created several pieces in which “At the table there is an accumulation of emotions attached by everyday cutlery”, “Cocoon” a performance/installation supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and “HALE – study for an artificial organism”, a piece created with the THIS TAKES TIME collective.
I was supported by O Rumo do Fumo from 2012 to 2017.
I worked and collaborated as a performer in plays by Miguel Loureiro, Vera Mantero, Rui Catalão, Ana Borralho & João Galante, Xavier le Roy & Scarlet Yu, Jérôme Bel, André Guedes, Miguel Pereira, James Newitt, Salomé Lamas, Bruno Humberto, Anne Kerzerho & Loïc Touzé.
As a musician, I played with the bands Groove Intercourse, Farra Fanfarra, PuntzkaPuntz and They Must be Crazy. Currently, I play with the band dUASsEMIcoLCHEIASiNVERTIDAS. Furthermore, I have been developing a solo musical project with saxophones, the artistic duo Papillons d’éternité with Tânia Carvalho, and since 2016 I’m collaborating in different projects by Andresa Soares.
When I’m in a creative process I try to know myself better, know the world around me, know you better, I try to understand what I can’t understand, I try to evolve and grow. I try to have moments of ecstasy; I look for satisfaction. I try to be a vehicle for something I can’t explain. I try to be present; I try to be a better person, I want to give something that I’m made of, that it’s not just me. I want to be real; I want to be there; I want to surprise myself and I want to feel that it’s not just me doing it. I like to be demanding and being easy and simple, but sometimes I can be contradictory, in that situation I put myself in a dialogue with time. Absorbing what’s there to extract the essence better. I follow my intuition a lot in my life and work, and many of my decisions thus arise. I avoid working on things that I don’t want to do, that I don’t like or don’t believe. In some of my new work ideas that are coming up, I’m mixing different people with different professional backgrounds who could be living in different parts of the world.