Helena Almeida

By wearing the canvas, Almeida explores the relationship between painting and the artist’s body in performance. She would go on to repeat such activities, photographed by Artur Rosa, her husband and “viewer number one”. In a series of black-and-white photographs, Almeida applies brushstrokes of a vivid blue, before proceeding to detach the colour and stash it in her pocket.

She variously hides from or reveals herself to the viewer, whom she challenges to “Feel me, Hear me, See me” (Series “Sente-me, Ouve-me, Vê-me”). Through its countless iterations, this series explores the inherent impossibilities of the sensory experiences that have been stipulated.

Clad in “sharp, deep black”, her body cuts across highly architectural canvases that inhabit the space of her studio. This was the very place where, as a girl she would pose for her father, the sculptor Leopoldo Almeida. Here, too, she would examine the powers of seduction of a woman who, as she got older, reshaped her involvement with sculpture, crossing the wall, lowering her foot, her hand or entire body to the floor.