ANA LINHARESOur time is out of joint

This project started as a failed attempt of licking wounds, looking for accommodations and coming to terms with the presence of disability, neurodivergence, queer identity and gender non-conformity.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare states that ‘thetime is out of joint’, implying that time can be felt in the body, deep in the bones and tissues, as some sort of ‘skeletal dislocation’*. Linhares’ recent research and practice focus on the articulation of a dissonance among normativity, where neither their body nor their mind matches what societal values appoint as normal, expected, or standard. Linhares lives in Crip and Queer time, timelines that flow differently from those within the able-bodied, able-minded cishetero-norm that has been pushed as the ultimate version of human experience.

When one lives in Crip and/or Queer time, they fall through society’s cracks and gaps, and start living in transgression. The tyranny of normativity means that you either fit in it or you automatically are a transgressor: a rebel or a monster.

Within this failure or fall from normativity, one can claim a space and create a powerful existence, where knights in shining armor, wielding toxic positivity and futurity ideals, do not enter and ‘freaks’ with prosthetics can thrive. 

* (Freeman, E.)

Ana Linhares (Póvoa de Varzim, 1990) lives and works in Utrecht, and has been involved in projects, residencies and exhibitions in Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands. Holding a BA in Fine Arts, from the School of Fine Arts – University of Porto (2012) and an MA in Fine Arts & Design, from the HKU - Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (2019), Ana Linhares was represented by KubikGallery (Porto) from 2013 to 2023. 

Working and collaborating in different projects and contexts, including residencies, archive research and articulation with artistic institutions, Ana Linhares has received, among other awards and nominations, the 2018-2019 Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Research Grant and was nominated for the 2018 Novo Banco Revelação, at Serralves Foundation.

Ana Linhares works with archival practices, storytelling, deconstruction and the intersection of narratives and language. The artist develops experimental practices and research connected to various areas of the Humanities (History, Literature, Philosophy, etc.), using installations, diagrams, and montage/compositions to suggest and explore new interpretations and possibilities. An example of this is the long-term project “On Constellations”, with several editions between 2017 and 2021. The artist’s research interests have extended to the articulation of past work intersecting with Crip and Queer theory and practices at an institutional level. Ana Linhares has been exploring the connections and articulation between Crip Queer Temporalities, narratives, theory, history, and gender theory. The different stages of the work have been presented at the Casco Art Institute (Utrecht), Hotel Maria Kapel (Hoorn) and Springboard Art Fair (Utrecht).