From doing to thinking and vice versa: A route in the artistic work of Sofia de Medeiros

Abstract

The text presents the exhibition The Invisible Thread. The Popular and the Divine in the Imaginary of Sofia de Medeiros, open at Museu de Arte Popular in Lisbon, between the 7^th of March and the 30^th of July 2019. The artistic trajectory that Sofia de Medeiros has been developing since the 1990s conjugates a strong ethnographic research component, of which she reveals herself to be profoundly knowledgeable, and a lived experience of this heritage of cultural traditions that give them shape. Inspired by the know-how and the manual abilities from handicrafts, the work of the Azorean artist turns inseparable the thought and the theoretical reflection of the handmade work and technical skills. The artist seeks to weave relations between contemporary art and folk art. Presenting some works carried out between 2012 and 2017 and a new and larger set of unseen works expressly designed for three rooms of the Museum of Popular Art (Minho, Trás-os-Montes and Porticos Room), the exhibition proposes to create a dialogue with some historical documents, such as photographs, drawings and objects that belong to the collections of this museum and the National Museum of Ethnology.