Beatriz Albuquerque, Madalena Leitão, Maria Jose Oliveira, Maria Jose Palla at Graça Brandão Gallery in Lisbon.

 Exhibition banner, entrance to Graça Brandão Gallery, April 4, 2025

By DAVID MOSCOVICH April 4, 2025 

In the narrow, stony upper passageways of the Bairro Alto in Lisbon is a gallery at the plateau of the Rua dos Caetanos called Galeria Graça Brandão. Friday, April 4, 2025, was a day of alternating rain and sunshine, and the fast-moving clouds promised a quickening crowd. According to the press release, this exhibition featured Beatriz Albuquerque (Day and Night) and Madalena Leitão (Paintings), in addition to a selection of work by Maria Jose Oliveira and Maria Jose Palla. The opening at 6pm extended well into the evening.

When I asked why these women artists were placed all together in one exhibition, gallery owner Jose Mario Brandão said that they each have art in their DNA. "It is a part of them," he said. While works of these four women artists could not be more different in both form and content -- paradoxically these distinctions may be the most unifying feature among them. 

In broad strokes, Beatriz Albuquerque presented performance-based, architecturally imbued line drawings on fabric, large-form paper, pine wood and video focused across a binary theme all entitled "Concrete Series" on various surfaces. Madalena Leitão filled a room with colorful balloons providing a child-like -- but not childish -- reflection on new acrylic works on linen. A concise selection from two octagenarian artists who are also close friends shared a space the gallery terms the "Room Next Door," Maria Jose Oliveira and Maria Jose Palla. Oliveira rendered a variety of corporeal, organic objects, most of which had taken on the color of deterioration (without actual deterioration), many of which related to a retrospective at Fundacao Carmana e Costa. Maria Jose Palla showed a cross-section of her self-portrait refractions via photography both in traditional framed moldings as well as hallucinatory transparent boxes in miniature.

Beatriz Albuquerque, Graça Brandão Gallery, April 4, 2025

In her text "A Bird's Eye View," Emilia Ferreira stated that Beatriz Albuquerque reveals the "structural and conceptual nature of drawing" and that her works here are derived from her performance art. I asked Beatriz, who holds a doctorate from Columbia University (NY), if she agreed with what Ferreira said. "Yes," she said, "the drawings come from my thinking process of creating art pieces, so they are the mockups for other projects such as 'Work For Free' (2005) or 'Predict the Future with Chocolates' (2014)." The unerringly straight lines, now emanating from fixed points, now via asymmetrical constellations, are punctuated with the occasional spherical rendering, variations on a consistent design across all mediums. 

Are these drawings abstract? I asked. To respond, she drew a parallel between her work and that of Kazmir Malevich: "Reading Malevich's diary," she explained, "his work was thought of as abstract, but he writes about his first airplane trip and how this bird's eye view perspective was the origin of much of his composition." She alluded to the point of view visible from thousands of feet high, and how Malevich's work was more akin to architectural drawing such that "on canvas he paints a black square on a white background, but it could stem from the roof of a building or structure -- from the airplane's perspective."

Beatriz created a minimum of 120 paper works sized 21cm x 30cm, yet only eighty of those were mounted on the wall at this exhibition, which inspired the name "Day and Night". As Beatriz described, the black-background drawings were based on her 2023 New York performance called "Wonder Memories" whereas the white-background drawings were created in 2009 for her performance "Icon of $$$" presented at The Conflux Festival, New York. In addition, there were three sets of five drawings on wood facing the south wall, three large hanging fabric sheets with a surprise, a roll two meters wide extending from the wall across the floorspace, a set of graphite sculptures, a videoart piece, a giant pencil, three artist books and a bit more.   

Beatriz said she was influenced by Lygia Pape, to whom she cast tribute in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art (2005) "using red wool to string lines showing how people circulate between objects." Beatriz Albuquerque has garnered several awards including the Myers Art Award (New York), the Revelation Prize at the 17th Bienal de Cerveira, and the Performance Ambient Series Award, PAC/Edge Performance Festival, Chicago, among other accolades.

Madalena Leitão, Graça Brandão Gallery, April 4, 2025
 

I asked the artist Madalena Leitão about the balloons strewn across the floor of her exhibition room but also represented in a number of her paintings in the room.

"This was my first exhibition of this size," she said, "thus the balloons function to bring light and playfulness, a way to not take myself too seriously."

In striking counterpoint was the deep blue color schema and Goya-like appearance of a set of disembodied hands, in one example. In another, a depiction of a young boy (based on her son), whose mouth is erased, or defocused. The complexity and paradox of family, both joy and sorrow, seemed to emanate from these acrylic works on linen. "It's more about emphasizing the eyes", said Leitão.

The white horse, a motif which graces a number of these paintings, is a specific animal for Madalena, "a horse from my childhood" that she said helps bring together the best of both her childhood and her son's childhood as a whole. Her aim was to present a total experience, not only the positive but also the darkness: "it's about acceptance," she said, "rather than escape."

A recurring phrase by Fernando Pessoa, which also featured in Leitão's own wedding, adorned the works in more than one iteration: "Happiness is just to be where we already are," which seems to act as a form of affirmation or perhaps a form of therapy.  

Maria Jose Oliveira, Graça Brandão Gallery, April 4, 2025
 

Maria Jose Oliveira's straw-hued artifacts reverberated in a decided antithesis of a Beuys object. The artist confirmed that one conglomerate of zipties, spoons and other household utensils represented Darwin's spine.

"This was my grandfather's spoon," she said, pointing to a silver object.

Each of these works had been carefully preserved with a fixer in order to preserve the work's original form. In one recent work, framed just near a greenwood coatrack, a drawing by her grandson lingers near a bundle of yellowed yucca leaves, with an apple suspended above. I asked Oliveira if the apple, which seemed placed intentionally the way it appears in the painting by Magritte, was related to Magritte, but she said it had nothing to do with Magritte. 

"It probably came from Adam and Eve," she said. In her works is a particular absence of the body or even a dismemberment, as with the empty torso figures, or a gown engineered from cow intestines. A fictional archaeology exists here, albeit perhaps an archaeology of artifice.  

 Maria Jose Palla, Graça Brandão Gallery, April 4, 2025

Maria Jose Palla's self-portraits neighbored the walls with Maria Jose Oliveira for good reason -- the two artists have been lifelong friends since their high school years and they are both now into their 80's.

"We're like family, or at least as close as family," said Oliveira, of the relationship between the two artists.

When in 2024, the Portuguese state purchased a series of 50 Polaroids from the 1970's and 1980's by Maria Jose Palla, the reasoning, in part, was because in her self-portraits, photography is not only utilized as a portrait in the classical sense, but also as a method of transforming the artist rather than as a way of simply preserving a moment in time (as might be the case with a snapshot), which confirms that she had "a singular aesthetic vision in her idea of the self-portrait."

A performance by Beatriz Albuquerque is scheduled for April 18 at 6pm, which will begin at the gallery then perambulate the streets including the Praça Luís de Camões and finish at the Largo do Chiado. One more performance on 23 May, also by Beatriz Albuquerque, will occur at 6pm at Graça Brandão Gallery. The exhibition will remain open until May 24, 2025. WM