Entanglements
Nights falls, day rises, night falls and another day rises and the pen does not stop like a beating vein that keeps the life line going in unexpected directions. To draw, to live. The pen does not belong to the drawer, but the drawer channels what it draws, like a medium holding a medium. João Vieira Torres’s Entanglements is in his own words “an endless film, if ends were none”. The series of drawings make for a mosaic without end nor beginning where medusas, crying crocodiles, eyes that cut swords, sisters and mothers of courage along with celestial turtles rise in a world not too distant from our own, a world where every line connects to another.
Ana Vaz
ENTANGLEMENTS
I don’t think and this makes me think with my hands
I stop
I look
I see what I wasn’t seeing
The traces of whom the existence I did not suspect
It’s not unconscious
It’s not surreal
It’s not Inspiration, nor genius
It’s the mechanics of the body-spirit
And this is done
Doing me well
They are pieces
And in them many other
Worlds-lines
Then I stop
I look
I see
And I put the pieces side by side
And I see a strange body
Roots entangled, rising from the weight of the burrowed earth
And I put the pieces side by side again
Then I stop
I look
I see a line of many lives
An endless film
If ends were none
Nor fatigue
And after tiredness comes rest
And after rest the joy of effort
And the hand traces
And the eraser erases
And the world gone wrong traverses us
And the world as it goes traverses us
And the world doing well traverses us
And penetrated by so many worlds
I don’t know by which hole
to incorporate them
We mate
And these are our babies
Cute
Monstrous
Scribbled
Full
Of love
Of faults
Of meanings
Too many
Like the throbbing of the pulse vein
that beats not to stop.
— João Vieira Torres
EMARANHADOS
Não penso e isso me faz pensar com as mãos
Paro
Olho
Vejo o que não via
Os traços de quem a existência não suspeitava
Não é inconsciente
Não é surreal
Não é Inspiração, nem gênio
É mecânica do corpo-espirito
E isso se faz
Me fazendo bem
São pedaços
E neles muitos outros
Linhas-mundos
Dai paro
Olho
vejo
E coloco os pedaços lado a lado
E vejo um corpo estranho
Raízes em emaranho sobe o peso da terra cavoucada
E coloco outras vezes os pedaços lado a lado
Dai paro
Olho
Vejo uma linha de muitas vidas
Um filme sem fim
Se fins não houvessem
Nem o cansaço
E depois do cansaço vem o descanso
E depois do descanso o gozo do esforço
E a mão traça
E a borracha apaga
E o mundo indo mal nos atravessa
E o mundo indo como vai nos atravessa
E o mundo indo bem nos atravessa
E penetrado por tantos mundos
Não sei (por) qual buraco
Os incorporo
A gente se acasala
E os nossos bebês são esses
Bonitinhos
Monstruosos
Rabiscados
Cheios
De amor
De faltas
De sentidos
Demasiados
Como o saltitar da veia do pulso
Que pula pra não parar.
— João Vieira Torres
João Vieira Torres was born in Recife, Brazil, in 1981. Since 2002 he has lived and worked in Paris. After studying visual arts at the Fine Arts Conservatory in Miami, he obtained a master’s in photography and video at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, then studied at Le Fresnoy and followed the doctoral program ‘Document and Contemporary Art’ at the Ecole Européenne Supérieure de L’Image.His artistic practices include photography, cinema, video art and performance. He is interested by the difficulty of establishing roots or anchors, whether they be in relation to territory, identity or the body (“Les Oiseaux sont distraits”, 2016, “Tore”, 2015, “Ici, là-bas et Lisboa”, 2012, “La Bibliothèque, la nuit”, 2011, “Nursery Rhymes”, 2009/2010, “2 + 1”, 2011).
His work has been presented in many festivals, galleries and museums, amongst which; Centre Pompidou (FR), New York Anthology Film Archives (US), Palais de Tokyo (FR), Villa Arson (FR), MIS São Paulo (BR), LABoral (SP), CPH:Dox (DK), IndieLisboa (PT), Tampere Short Film Fest (FI), Vilnius CAC (LT), Alexandrina Arts Center (EG), St. Petersburg Museum of Photography (RU), and the Pingyao International Photography Festival (China).