Vasco Araújo
Vasco Araújo was born in 1975 in Lisbon, where he lives and works. Graduated in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon in 1999, he continued his studies at Maumaus, School of Visual Arts, where he took the Advanced Course in Plastic Arts in 2000. After receiving the prestigious New Artists Award from the EDP Foundation in 2002, he performed the Core Program at the Glassel School of Art, Houston, USA, 2003-2004. Of the various international artistic residencies he participated in, the most recent took place at Artspace - Gibraltar Point, Canada, 2014; Picatoteca do Estado de S. Paulo, Brazil, 2014; FLORAars+nature, Colombia, 2015; and FLACC, Belgium, 2016. Vasco Araújo's exhibition career began in 2000 with the presentation of the video O Carteiro Toca Sempre Duas Vezes (The Postman Always Rings Twice), and was affirmed the following year with the individual presentation La Stupenda at Galeria César/Filomena Soares. It soon became known internationally, at key moments such as the participation in the 2005 Venice Biennale, with the work The Girl of the Golden West and the selection for the Artes Mundi award in 2008.
Working regularly image in articulation with sound, in Vasco Araújo's work the awareness of language - visual, written, declared, corporal, performed - gains a central place. Using means such as sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance, his works almost always integrate the presence of the body - of the artist or others - in representation that destabilizes pre-established notions of identity and gender. Starting from the referential universe of entertainment, opera, and classical themes establish a bridge between past and present. The artist's field of interest extends to European colonialism, in a reflection on the construction of history and memory, consciously reactivated in major exhibitions such as Botany, MNAC, 2014, and Demasiado pouco, demasiado tarde (Too little, too late), CIAJG, 2015.
Among other exhibitions, the individual, Momento à Parte, presented in 2019 at MAAT, as a celebration of the artist's 20 years of career, stands out. His work is represented in several collections, books, and catalogues, namely the edition that accompanied the exhibition Vasco Araújo: Todas as Histórias, held at the Carmona e Costa Foundation in 2018.
RS, setembro 2020
