THE OVARIES OF THE POPPIES

Isabel Carvalho, Clara Batalha

(…) Poppies are very sensitive wildflowers. Her red tulips, which used to cover the fields, are disappearing. In France, an ecological movement (Nous voulons des coquelicots) warns of this danger. The representation of the shape of the poppy, with an emphasis on its center, is used in the graphic material to promote awareness actions for the eminent environmental catastrophe as an emblematic symbol of an attentive and vigilant community. The farmers, who are responsible for their disappearance, deny what is an observable fact and dissociate themselves from the relationship between the toxins pulverized in the fields and the diseased reproductive organs, which lead to the sterilization of the poppies.

In 2011, Clara Batalha participated with a poster in an exhibition entitled Flor Infinita (Ship Empty), giving it the same name. In the drawing, there is a morphological correspondence between a flower (generic) and the human body or, otherwise described, makes a body fully match over another body, the human over the vegetable. In this process, the artist, who plays with similarities and correspondences, stresses the importance of those that aim at the integration of the human in nature, in a process of harmonious interdependence. And it is for this very reason that it takes as disturbing the disappearance of the poppies (that knows limited) of the fields.

In the Poveiros Square, where Sismógrafo is located, a small white graffiti, made with a stencil, which almost disappears when the square is full, stand out from the two attached spirals - what meaning occurs to us, in our daily interception, the encounter of such an archaic image? We see - possibly - an image of an ancestral unit, repeated, inscribed in anonymity, without therefore considering to what extent we are involved. Language is always the mark of a body and this, without a doubt, provokes us. (…)

Clara Batalha is the result of a work of naming a fictitious author identity, determined by age, gender, and geography, with thematic and stylistic autonomy. It is a name composed of two complementary words (an adjective and a noun), which in themselves constitute a connotative sense of a face state of high and tumultuous vitality. The self-referentiality of Clara Batalha's work is, in turn, the work of displacement and edification of a section of Isabel Carvalho's work. In the limit, the center of the above is the confirmation of the action of naming an identity-shaping process.

IC/CB 

Clara Batalha (Porto, 1929) In 1952, graduated in Art and Geometry from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. In the same year, Batalha attended the free course of Decorative Arts in the same institution. Between 1953 and 1965, was a private educator in Paris. From 1969 to 1983, Batalha settled in the Douro region where she worked as a librarian at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In 1977, began publishing in the bulletin of the same Foundation. Since 2010, in co-authorship with Isabel Carvalho, she has developed several artistic projects. In the last two years has been dedicated to environmental activism.

Isabel Carvalho (Porto, 1977) is a visual artist, editor and researcher. In recent years, her artistic work has developed around the visual arts, writing and publishing, characterized by a strong research component – crossing scientific and speculative approaches as a methodology. She participated in international exhibitions and editorial projects. Along with her artistic work, Carvalho has been dedicated to the teaching of subjects of Drawing and Illustration.