An Exploration of Trash
An immersive collection of paintings, sculptures and interactive installations.
Since I started exploring the concept of sustainability in my work, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of imperfection and intention. It is the fear of judgment and the potential for imperfection that challenges me to continue playing with materials and images.
In a consumer society, which is daily impelled to acquire, collecting, taking home something else “just because”, what we do with the excess, with the amount of matter that is produced, that is accumulating, in a vicious circle of consumption that generates production and desire?
Are we the ones who consume these objects or are they the ones who, without us knowing it, manipulate for the sake of a greater, unrecognizable, even malicious challenge? And what ceases to be important to us then becomes dispensable?
From a matter that is no longer new because the most recent, the one that we bought today, gains space for what we bought yesterday, Kideo Kidō seeks find ways to give a new life to this garbage.
From pieces, fragments, of shapeless shapes and colors that are no longer harmonious, the artist seeks to reflect on a society that thinks little about tomorrow and lives for today, without properly evaluating the consequences of a present without ambition.
Based on multiple materials, from cardboard to paper, from glass to acrylic, from music to installation, An Exploration of Trash is a very personal vision the way garbage can be, more than that. It may be, after all, the way out for many of the current problems. Using what others, at some point, thought it was dispensable, creates readings of the same reality, crossing with very concrete symbologies, of a social, political, economic, cultural, religious and even sexual.
In art, as in life, life is made of past, present and future. The garbage, the our garbage can, after all, say more about us than what we daily we can think. It’s not just something we throw away; is part of our history, of our identity, which every day is being subtracted from each one of us.
O Mar Não Tem Limites
Installations during the 2024 Environmental Education Activities of the Blue Flag Programme in the city of Espinho.
The Ocean emerges as a strong central figure, the protagonist of complex, larger narratives. The concept of ‘Limite’ (boundary, as a line separating surfaces or contiguous terrains, e.g. border) opens the discussion about seawater as a hyper-object, whose ecosystems relate to each other and transcend time and space.
“O MAR NÃO TEM LIMITES”, 2024. BIBLIOTECA MUNICIPAL JOSÉ MARMELO E SILVA
Based on waste collected from coastal areas of Espinho in support of the Plogging Challenge and Lipor initiatives, the objects were reused for the creation of installations during a residence period of the artist at FACE/Museu Municipal de Espinho. During this residency, she worked in collaboration with the community, schools and institutions such as CERCI.
O Mar Não Tem Limites, reinforce a new way of educating and raising awareness about the importance of the ocean and the challenges for its preservation, through the exploration of waste. For the artist, the ecological crisis must be solved locally in order to have a global impact, and individually, we can all be the leaders that the ocean needs.
Upon entering the Museum, a 15 meters long fishing net extends throughout the atrium, unveiling the invasion of plastic into the marine habitats. This fishing net was rendered by a local fisherman who found it unusable for fishing due to the immensity of microplastics that became entangled during the fishing activity.
“MAR DE CORES”, 2024. MUSEU MUNICIPAL DE ESPINHO
The installation at the gallery is a symbolic and poetic representation of the underwater world. Small objects suggest worlds within worlds, with surrealistic colorful projections and LED lights that produce a natural and fantastic environment. Shapes create shadows and reflections. The artist plays with ideas relating to evolution and environment – one of which is the fact that in the Ocean there are no painted objects; use of decomposing materials, arranged in such a way as to interact and merge into the environment, to create a dynamic inside the manipulated reality; finally, the integration of the visitor, who walks along it and explores it.
The video installation is the starting point of this project. It is inspired by the footprints on the sand swept by the sea to the coastal regions, derived from sea level rise caused by climate change. This video installation is composed of a constructed “path” made with sand, stones, human footsteps, and a television monitor placed on the floor exhibiting a frenetic on loop composition of images. The close-up shows the ocean and the light of the sun reflecting off the surface of the water. The video was shot in a single shot. The speed is increased and the original sound appears with noise and interferences. It plays with the idea of the water element as a dangerous object and the flow of water is alternately an image of desire and a perceptual threat in an ambivalent swing between distancing and immersion of the viewer.
“O MAR NÃO TEM LIMITES”, 2024. BIBLIOTECA MUNICIPAL JOSÉ MARMELO E SILVA
“OCEAN TRASH ART”, 2024. CENTRO AZUL
“OCEANO MÁGICO”, 2024. CENTRO MULTIMEIOS DE ESPINHO
A Liberdade
Award-winning Installation to Celebrate 50 Years of the April 25th Carnation Revolution.
Installation during the celebrations at Fundação Oriente, comprised of 300 crocheted carnations attached to a 100-meter-long steel structure, installed in the form of an ascending spiral. This exhibition also features works by Fundação Mario Soares/Maria Barroso.
Click Here for the full press release.
“A LIBERDADE”, 2024. MUSEU DO ORIENTE. Photo by Gonçalo Barriga, Courtesy of Fundação Oriente.
What do we talk about when we talk about “freedom”? Do we know, for sure, what it means to live this “freedom”? And how will it remain as “freedom” as we (still) know it?
As part of the Celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the 25th of April, Kideo Kidō created “A Liberdade”, a large-scale installation with 950x250x340 cm that aims to remember the importance of nourishing our lives with good values and better practices. Because living in “freedom” also means to live in according to the principles of union, strength, and mutual support.
Thus, though community participation, based on the collaboration with social institutions such as (Centro Social da Paróquia da Lage (Vila Verde, Braga)) and a nursing home (Lar Maria Luisa, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Vila Nova de Cerveira), this installation starts off by the use of cotton thread in green and red – the colors that symbolize the April Revolution – to create 300 hadcrafted crocheted carnations. This flower became a symbol of the Portuguese’s struggle for freedom when a young woman offered red carnations to the military personnel, on April 25, 1974.
These carnations were attached to a steel structure installed in the form of an ascending spiral, to symbolize the positive impact of freedom on the post-25th of April generations, and the continuous and progressive fight for the promotion of freedom in society. Both a never-ending quest and an always open process that alerts to the challenges of its preservation, so that, individually, we all continue to fight for its safeguarding and its conquests – here and beyond borders.
“A LIBERDADE”, 2024. MUSEU DO ORIENTE. Photo by Gonçalo Barriga, Courtesy of Fundação Oriente.
“A LIBERDADE”, 2024. MUSEU DO ORIENTE. Photo by Gonçalo Barriga, Courtesy of Fundação Oriente.
