Vasco Araujo: Per-versions

The Mills Gallery

Date: April 18- June 15, 2008

April 18, 2008- June 15, 2008

The opening reception for Vasco Araújo: Per-versions is April 18, 2008 from 6pm-8pm at The Mills Gallery.

Boston, MA--    Vasco Araújo: Per-Versions features a collection of videos focused on how the retelling of a story becomes the story itself. The exhibit is organized by Jose Luis Blondet, curator of visual arts at the BCA, in the Mills Gallery Guest Room at the Boston Center for the Arts.  Blondet points out that Araujo’s work “confronts the viewer with different versions of seemingly unchangeable histories presented as stories tainted with personal epics, and the silence that remains behind the voice that speaks.” Blondet continues, “the selection presented at the Mills focuses on videos related to the opera world. In the retelling of the story of an opera plot, the speaker inevitable discloses political, gender and social tensions embedded in the apparent neutrality of the history.’

The videos will be screened according to the following schedule:

April 18 – May 4        About Being Different, 2007 (18 minutes)

About Being Different is a collaboration with local vicars from the Newcastle Gateshead community.  The work explores ideas of community and is inspired by Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes, and its harrowing story of a fisherman persecuted by his fellow villagers.  Five vicars share their experiences watching the opera. Their commentaries provide a unique reflection upon the notion of community and the individual. The red brick terraced architecture of residential Gateshead also plays a role in illustrating the “notion of sameness.”  It is used as a visual symbol of community, and raises for the viewer the question of what it means to be different in the face of uniformity.

May 7 – May 25        The Girl of the Golden West, 2006 (18 minutes)

The Girl of the Golden West is based on the story of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “ La Fanciulla del West.” The story presents a tragic love triangle between a girl, a sheriff, and a Mexican American bandit. Both men demonstrate their passion for the “girl” through different ways resulting in social abuses and different truths in a place where everything is extremely difficult – in California during the invasion by American forces into what was then Mexican territory. In the video an African American woman, a current resident of Texas retells the story of the opera, offering her confusions and racial perspectives on the melodrama.

May 28 – June 14        Recital, 2004 (20 minutes)

In this video, the artist in drag interprets five arias.  All of these arias were written for the voice of a woman but as male characters. The artist reverts the gender representation that functions in the opera world, subtly questioning gender and sexual roles. The soundtrack consists of the piano accompaniment of the arias, as well as a recording of a woman dictating the texts of the arias. The voice of the artist is muted.

June 15        A la carte (audience can ask for any one of the three videos to be screened)

Vasco Araújo (Portugal, 1975) has exhibited widely at an international level.

In the last six years, Araújo (Portugal, 1975) has had solo and group exhibitions worldwide in internationally renowned spaces. Among his solo exhibits:  Eco, Jeu de Paume, Paris (forthcoming May 2008); Ex Ovo Omnia, Galeria Filomena Soares (Lisbon, 2008); Perruque, La Suite, La Maison Rouge Fondation Antoine de Galbert (Paris, 2007); Facing the others, University of the Arts (Philadelphia, 2007); Vasco Araújo, La Nuova pesa Centro per l’arte Contemporanea (Rome, 2006); Dilemma,  Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, S.M.A.K. (Belgium, 2005); Hamlet, Galerie Gabrielle Maubrie, Paris; Project Room, ArtCologne 2003 (Cologne, 2003); Yuill / Crowley Gallery, Sydney and in the Project Room, ARCO (Madrid, 2003).

Group shows include: Artes Mundi, Wales Internacional Visual Art Exhibition and Prize, National Museum Cardiff (Wales, UK, 2008); Ne pas jouer avec des choses mortes, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de la Villa Arson (Nice, France, 2008); Kara Walker and Vasco Araújo:  Reconstruction, Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, 2007); On Young at Heart, Galeria Helga de Alvear (Madrid, 2007); Sala de Espelhos, NCCA, Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2006); Territorio Oeste, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Unión Fenosa, MACUF, A Coruña (Spain, 2006); Voix Off, Centre R. d’Art Contemporain Languedoc Roussillon, Sète (France, 2005); “Experience of Art”, La Biennale di Venezia, 51st internacional Exhibition of Art, Italian Pavillion (Venice, 2005); “Dialectics of Hope”, 1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, State Museum of Rosizo (Moscow, 2005); Amalgama, Comtemporary Art Museum, Houston; E-FLUX Video Rental, e-flux space (New York, 2004); 2004 Core Artist in Residence, Glassell School of Art (Houston, 2004); Solo (For Two Voices), Center for Curatorial Studies (Bard College, NY, 2003); Universal Strangers, Borusan Art Gallery (Istanbul, 2003); “The World May be Fantastic”- Biennale of Sydney 2002, Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, 2002).

Vasco Araújo’s work is in public collections around the world including: Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Modern, France; Credit Suisse, New York; Fundation ARCO, Madrid; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, Centro de Arte, Spain; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.

Araújo has been an artist in residence at the University of Arts, Philadelphia and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, Newcastle UK in 2007; Récollets, Paris in 2005; at the Core Program, Museum Fine Arts, Houston from 2003-2004 and EDP, Electricity Company, Portugal in 2002.