Miguel Januário | WUNDERKAMMERN

State of Minds
Curated by Giuseppe Ottavianelli
Critical essay by Miguel Moore
10 jun 2017 – 22 jul 2017

Wunderkammern presents for the first time the Portuguese artist Miguel Januário, with the solo show “State of Minds”. Developed from the project  ±Mais Menos±, the exhibition focuses on the social, political and economic current situation, developing problematic aspects such as the ideological crisis affecting liberal democracies and their guiding principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity; the role of the media and their mission; the tragic refugee crises which is sadly juxtaposed to the brutality of a paradoxical system that increasingly demands open markets and closed borders. The exhibition is presented in four interconnected segments, representing current themes of great relevance for the artist: politics, media, borders and thought. Each theme has been developed to occupy a different room of the gallery through multiple supports – from participatory installations, where viewers have an active role to provocative pieces realised with torn electoral posters and moulded plastic to his famous, sacrilegious “streetments”.

±Mais Menos± is an art project by Portuguese visual artist Miguel Januário (b. 1981) that began in 2005. Offering a critical reflection on contemporary societies, the work of Januário conducts a clinical dissection of reality conceptually reduced in its opposites: more/less, positive/negative, black/white. Under the ±Mais Menos± banner, the artist has produced work in a variety of media – from video to sculptural installations, from painting to performance. Besides numerous public art interventions in several countries, the project has also been showcased in solo and group exhibitions: Vera Cortês Gallery (Lisbon, 2010), MACE–Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (Elvas, 2011, 2014), Underdogs Gallery (Lisbon, 2013, 2014, 2015), Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasilia, 2014), Museu do Côa (Vila Nova de Foz Côa, 2015), Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais (Bragança, 2015), MUDE–Museu do Design e da Moda (Lisbon, 2016), MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Rome, 2016), and leading art festivals and events such as Walk & Talk Festival (São Miguel, Azores, 2011), Guimarães European Capital of Culture (Guimarães, 2012), La Tour Paris 13 (Paris, 2013), Nuart Festival (Stavanger, 2014), and Forgotten Project (Rome, 2016). The artistic research of Januário has also been the subject of two TED talks, at TEDxLuanda (Luanda, 2014) and TEDxPorto (Porto, 2015).

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