The artistic intervention of Sonia Falcone (Santa Cruz, 1965) in the Palácio Nacional da Ajuda proposes a conjunction between the history, landscape and palace relics of Portugal with the works of art inspired in the visions of a profound geography and traditional Bolivian and Latin American culture.
By inverting the direction of the trajectory of the campaign and appropriations of the conquest, Sonia Falcone brings together the landscapes of Lisbon that surrounds the Palace to the splendor of Latin American natural habitat and integrates to its interior pieces that evoke the multiple times of her continent. Thus, the exhibition curated by the Aluna Curatorial Collective becomes a diachronic encounter amongst cultures that build bridges between the vernacular and the contemporaneous, the universal and the local.
Falcone coalesce an ample spectrum of materials found in nature using the wide array of colors as an attribute of a prodigious nature and cultures practices of people that share the Earth. She creates art with the awareness that the relation between peoples has been defined by power seeking strategies with detrimental environmental consequences. Therefore, she proposes non-hegemonic dialogues between cultures as well as alternative passages for reconciliation with nature.
Life Fields brings to the residence of Lusitanian royalty, pieces that conjure the foundational myths, archeological sites and historical narratives, and the very Latin American landscape, inseparable from its cultural practices. She ends up inserting the skies, waters, plants, objects and the very profound memory of the continent named by Americo Vespucio, America, into the Palace halls.
Visitors will discover installations made from stained glass that summon nature, and works constructed with elements such as dried flowers, minerals and spices that tell a story, as well as virtual images projected on walls, photographs of mystical landscapes displayed in light boxes and paintings, tapestries and sculptures that fuse together art and handcrafts.
The proposal is similar to a double movement of recognition of the Lusitanian tradition and history, and of cultural re-conquest: it aspires for a reappearance of the past transformed into art in a way that reveals the astonishing quality of a dialogue between continents.