EXHIBITION
How to Talk about Trauma? A dictatorship still present in Iberian artists
Alice Geirinhas, Ana Perez-Quiroga, Carla Hayes Mayoral, Cintia Gutierrez, Cristina del Aguila, Elo Vega, Susana Gaudencio, Susana Mendes Silva

 

The exhibition brings together eight contemporary artists from Portugal and Spain (Andalusia) in order to explore the marks left by Iberian dictatorships on women’s present. The collected works address the intergenerational impact of political oppression, as well as the dynamics between memory, post-memory and counter-narration. From a critical perspective, these works question the cultural and historical amnesia that often silences the traumatic experiences of marginalized subjectivities.
Conceived as a labyrinthine path, the exhibition space combines fabric and a play of light, creating a scenography that dramatizes the tension between revelation and concealment. This device emphasizes both imaginary projections and the silences and resonances that inhabit the interstices of collective memory and the blind spots of official narratives.
More than just portraying pain, Como Falar do Trauma? | ¿Cómo Hablar del Trauma? invites the public to cross the boundaries between the visible and the veiled, the narrated and the forgotten, promoting poetic reflection and political awareness on how to deal with the legacies of the past and the possibility of reimagining futures.

 

Part of ongoing research at Lab2PT/IN2PAST, in this exhibition researcher Susana Gaudêncio presents the work Covas and the End of the World, 2025.
The curiosity that motivates research into the territory of Covas is guided by its history of extractive policies and technological exploitation of geological and water resources, such as gold mining in Roman times, the construction of the country’s second hydroelectric plant (1910), the extraction of tungsten and tungsten (1949-1984) and more recently attempts to prospect for lithium (2020-2023). Prospecting is used as a positive metaphor to apprehend the place in a performative way, through walking, and in this process collaborate with its community, namely: the one that represents local power; those involved in artistic and design processes that catalyze local development and sustainability; and the one that promotes activist struggle on the ground.

At the heart of the struggle, a group of women stands out — the women of Serra who, faced with the imminent threat to their land, mobilize with remarkable energy. Coming from different backgrounds, ages and experiences, these women organize themselves and weave networks of resistance that combine traditional knowledge, scientific knowledge and contemporary activism. Its diversity — far from being an obstacle — becomes its strength. Collectively, they are able to organize campaigns, engage with authorities, organize protests and involve the community, becoming a powerful vehicle against the environmental and social impacts of mining. More than a simple act of resistance, their movement reflects the creation of a new form of collective action, from the perspective of situated knowledge that, in its multiplicity, is successful in protecting the territory, inspiring other local and global struggles, in the present and in the future.

 

Exhibition Opening:
May 15, 2025 – 6:00 p.m.

 

More information on the Municipal Galleries website: HERE