Luisa Vaz Vilasboas

Moments before I found myself, I can see the places I’m made of in my mind because that’s where I like them the most. The mind is a place itself and maybe I’m looking for where I fit there. Envolved. Evolving. Looking. Searching. It feels distant but very very warm here. Like I’ve already dreamt about this place and it became real now that I am looking. Minutes before I found myself, I was as lost as I am now so maybe the time is coming or maybe the safety is as vague as everything I feel.

An introspective walk, an infinite search for the right place.

A project about introspection and finding a place for things to be. Processing feelings and working with the invisible. Using personal memories and feelings as a starting point, the idea is to explore an archive as an object for things of the heart and mind.
Process the past memories, process the present things, not thinking about the future.
This evolutive and on going project can result or be seen as a translation of thoughts as a colective matter, since it starts with the individual matters that exist in every human personal archive as they are things of the heart and mind.
An infinite search for the understanding of what is important to keep and let go. What is inside and what should be out. An exploration of a way around the mind and how to keep being sane in a world full of outside pressure to always be self aware.

This multidisciplinar project contains video work, photography collages, personal poems and glycerin sculptures mainly focused on the archive of memories and episodes of the author. Lives in the line of ephemerality, the passing of time and the idea of keeping in and letting go. Exists a strong relation in old portuguese dictates that serve this ideas and that are also a living through time and generations thoughts.

search for the right place act,
digital composition and collage

search for the right place of words act,
processing words by archiving them.

search for the right place of words act,
ways of processing words. Stocking.

In Vertigo by W.G. Sebald there's a passage about the idea of a memory being replaced by an image that is created in our own mind. This idea of giving a body, corpus, to something invisible is really important to me. The challenge of thinking a subject from the inside- feelings, emotions, personal memories feels very compatible to what I see myself as and making it a project to explore makes a lot of sense to me as a person and as an artist.

When I was little, there was also little to do but infinite possibilities. Me and my twin sister, in our very long free time used to find little treasures and hide them in a wood drawer at our grandmother's house. Every little piece had some type of meaning and there was a lot to imagine from it. Pieces of hair, lost keys, and old dry fruit that we had found on the floor one day- all of it was very special and important and HAD to be kept in our tiny little secret wood drawer.

The need to go back in time, to this innocent time, was the starting point to the project. Coming back to childhood matters, the fragility of things and feelings but also the levity of things and time. The tentative of trying to process these matters as a game that we all have to play but that probably doesn't have a right way or ending.
This gave origin to glycerin pieces and exercise books with various tentatives of processing these thing of the heart and mind. A glossary of words from that imaginarium giving birth to a corpus of possibilities to understand these matters, or trying.

DÓ MI NÓ HÁ BÊ CÊ. peças de glicerina branca e tinta da china.
Glossário em aberto de tradução das coisas do coração e da mente.
Ferramentas de armazenamento de palavras para o entendimento e desaparecimento das mesmas.

DÓ MI NÓ HÁ BÊ CÊ. white glycerin pieces and chinese ink.
On going glossary of the translation of the things of the heart and mind.
Word storage tools for understanding and disappearing words.

ATO DE ABERTURA, arquivo de peças de glicerina variadas: segredos, palavras duras, pensamentos, memórias... Tudo o que eventualmente se esquece ou desaparece com a passagem do tempo.

ATO DE ABERTURA, various glycerin pieces archive: secrets, hard words, thoughts, memories... Everything that eventually disappears with the passage of time.

Peças presentes na exposição coletiva ABC DE T2HY com Cristiana Alves, Núria Balinha e Rita Vieira no espaço AL589, Janeiro 2023.

ABC COISAS DO CORAÇÃO E DA MENTE,
cadernos de exercícios de procura infinita para tradução das coisas do coração e da mente.

BC COISAS DO CORAÇÃO E DA MENTE,
notebooks of exercices about the infinite search to translate the things of the heart and mind.

PROCURA INFINITA DO LUGAR, vídeo preto e branco, 9'48'' loop
conforto, procura, conforto. Procura infinita do Lugar onde pertenço. Ânsia de procurar o Lugar onde se chega ao conforto de apenas Ser. Realização de que o Lugar pode ser somente a procura infinita pelo mesmo.

PROCURA INFINITA DO LUGAR, black and white video, 9'48'' loop.
Confort, search, confort.Infinite searchof the Place where I belong. Anxiety to search the Place in which we find the confort of just Being. Realization that this Place can be purely this infinite search for itself.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

COMPRIMIR MOMENTOS, cubos em glicerina, ideia de arquivar, comprimir, processar coisas numa caixa. Entendimento do passado e do presente. Tudo o que foi e o que virá. Amargo, doce, palavras, momentos/ COMPRIMIR MOMENTOS, glicyrine cubes, the ideia of archiving, compress and process things of the mind and heart in a box. Processing the past and future. Everything that went and is. The bitter, the sweet, words, moments.

PUBLICAÇÃO
ABC COISAS DO CORAÇÃO E DA MENTE,
cadernos de exercícios de procura infinita para tradução das coisas do coração e da mente.
PUBLICATION
BC COISAS DO CORAÇÃO E DA MENTE,
notebooks of exercices about the infinite search to translate the things of the heart and mind.

A MEMÓRIA, A PALAVRA E A RECORDAÇÃO ENCONTRAM-SE NA RUA (E PERDEM-SE), 5'46''
Video que surge após a leitura de parte da obra The Electronic Revolution de William s. Burroughs, destaque, reorganização e escrita de partes do texto de modo a concretizar um entendimento sobre o cérebro que edita a memória e a lembrança. É escrito um pequeno conto ou história que pode ser lida a uma criança antes desta adormecer - a memória, a palavra e a recordação encontram-se na rua (e perdem-se).

A MEMÓRIA, A PALAVRA E A RECORDAÇÃO ENCONTRAM-SE NA RUA (E PERDEM-SE), 5'46''
video inspired by the reading of a part of the book The Electronic Revolution by Williams S. Burroughs. Has it's origin in the selection and reorganization of the text that turned out to have it's main focus on the idea of the "editing brain" that transforms memories. It's then written a short text that can be read to a child before sleep.

GAME,
A game is any activity in which there is a player figure (as a practicing individual) and rules that can be for a restricted or free environment.


-
ABC of things of the heart and mind, wants to translate what you (as individual) are trying to understand. With this, the project lives exactly from the uncertainty of everything I have, but from the certainty that this will be one of the possible infinite ways of looking for (in an attempt to find) that comfortable place of knowing that one is and is well and in the right place. A place as a mental and physical space, existential and of the soul, which at least exists in the expectation that there is something that justifies being alive. If that's what you're looking for, a constant arrangement of memories that are being transformed as you pick them up (review them), so be it. May an infinite game open the way for me to find what I don't see. May it welcome me back into my grandmother's lap, in the innocence of my childhood where life was fragile but frightening, but no more than it is now and that's why it leads me to believe that, for us to be, we will be tiny Human Beings who play with our own selfs to, forever, feel the feeling of home, even if it is too small to fit there forever.

Childhood lives in the little corner you had to play and playing means the past and the memory of weighing several kilos but feeling like mere grams. House as a place more than physical, as experience, time, memories and life. If you don't know where you're going, make the walls of the path, destination. So I started to develop this project where I create another life for the things that already live in my inner space.
From the mind comes the wandering, the endless search, the eagerness to find meaning and organization. From the heart comes the desire to go back to time that has passed because it is ephemeral and because it makes new things exist that were born from what once existed.
Memories that come from others. Experiences that generate changing results over time and that come and go with it. What remains is ephemerality, the mark, the record, the archive.
The invisible things remain.

ARQUIVO

DÓ MI NÓ HÁ BÊ CÊ. peças de glicerina branca e tinta da china.
Glossário em aberto de tradução das coisas do coração e da mente.
Ferramentas de armazenamento de palavras para o entendimento e desaparecimento das mesmas.

DÓ MI NÓ HÁ BÊ CÊ. white glycerin pieces and chinese ink.
On going glossary of the translation of the things of the heart and mind.
Word storage tools for understanding and disappearing words.

Wanting to go back to my homes - to the people who now only live in my inner space, to the real houses that welcomed me in their soil and gave me the freedom to stick things in myself and on the walls, to the feeling of playing with my sister and seeing everything as giant, big and infinite, tasting the bread and butter that grandma gave us for lunch after kindergarten, digging the mushroom wall that was spaceship and shopping market, knowing nothing and having to learn everything- learning the A, the E, the I, the O and the U, knowing that the H is silent and that everything has an order, which I always liked. Feeling sheltered in the city where I grew up and feeling that I belonged there.
When walking and getting lost, it's important to know that what you have to do is always go back to the last point that is familiar to you. So I return to my first memory. The innocence I felt. And archive everything with nostalgia. The fragile things that live in me and that transport me back to the play mat, at grandma's house, with Helena, after bread and butter for lunch after returning from kindergarten.

Brincar às memórias
Glicerina, tinta-da-china, paprica. Tecido. Vídeo. Caderno de papel.

Brincar no tapete- regresso à primeira memória, ao ato de brincar e aprender. Exercícios de procura infinita - para voltar à infância, processar coisas, recordar ou esquecer palavras. A efemeridade do que é invisível. Da mente vem a deambulação. Do coração, o desejo de voltar.


Brincar às memórias
Glycerin, Indian ink, paprika. Tissue. Video. Paper notebook.

Playing on the carpet - return to the first memory, to the act of playing and learning. Infinite search exercises - to go back to childhood, process things, remember or forget words. The ephemerality of what is invisible. From the mind comes wandering. From the heart, the desire to return.

As memórias vivem de um cérebro que edita e que pode desobedecer a si próprio, criar barreiras entre aquilo que forma o arquivo.
O desencontro da palavra e da imagem- a perda de memória. O lamento do desaparecimento gradual das caixas que vão ficando velhas e enferrujadas, que não abrem mais. O jogo de associações começa a perder controlo de si próprio.
A massa cinzenta FRÁGIL que lamenta a sua própria existência.

Memories live in a brain that edits and that can disobey itself, creating barriers between what forms the archive.
The mismatch of the word and the image - the loss of memory. The lament of the gradual disappearance of the boxes that are getting old and rusty, that no longer open. The game of associations begins to lose control of itself.
The FRAGILE gray matter that regrets its own existence.

Cartas para a Memória (ou lamentos meus), por Cérebro.
papel 180gr desdobrável

O (des)encontro final das coisas do coração e da mente. Despedida do arquivo de si próprio e de tudo o que guardou. 

Letters to Memory (or My Laments), by Brain.
180gr folding paper

The final (mis)meeting of things of the heart and mind. Farewell to the archive of himself and everything he kept.

Publicação final do ano.
Final publication of the year. 

Postais com recordações da Memória- do seu nascimento, estudo, projeto, construção, lembrança, criação.

Ensaio final do projeto.
Final essay of the project.

lápide da Memória em glicerina
45cmX30cm

Tombstone of Memory in glycerin
45cmX30cm