Identidade
Identidade
Having lived in many different places one can only return as a new entity
As an artist I try to explore aspects of identity, roots and origins, place and displacement, crossings and wanderings, new surroundings and ever-changing reality and how these experiences inform and transform the person and the self that ultimately help me to find my artistic expression on the canvas and other creative materials.
Keeping in mind the wider context and guiding theme of the projects that I work on – the aesthetical reflection on contemporary Azorean artistic manifestations – I nonetheless leave room for other intangibles pertaining to my craft. While recognizing and asserting origins, one must be careful not to neglect important influences and aspects of one’s art in favor of background. That can or could place an artificial restriction on the artist’s vision.
Exonome is a term which originated in an Internet community some years ago and seeks to define/describe an individual who has lived outside his/her homeland, original place, social group or culture for an extended period of time and “has adapted to the new surroundings without losing awareness or characteristics of his/her origins.” This adaptation does not mean one fully blends in with the new reality; yet one has changed enough to feel somewhat “foreign” in the place of origin.
A full return is therefore never possible. Having wandered about and lived in many different places one can only return as a new entity. One belongs to nowhere and everywhere. This suspended state, this nomadic condition – exo (outside) + nome (possible alter. of nomad) – is in many ways an appropriate symbol or metaphor for the creative life.
The artist is a wayfarer, a nomad, a citizen of the world. This very unsettling and unsettled state constitutes also paradoxically a privileged viewpoint from which to see anew, to recreate one’s world.
As a Portuguese American artists, this journey, or sea voyage in the tradition of the navigators who charted new routes and remapped the world, led me geographically and symbolically across continents, space and time from Vila Franca do Campo in the Azores to California, via New England.
I’m part of a new generation of artists residing in this California where cultural diversity flourishes. We are the originators of new topographies, paradigms, symbols, a particular mode of expression and being that reflect the significant cultural contributions that immigrants have made in this outpost state. Yet we are first and foremost artists and our first allegiance is to our calling and inner vision.
In my work I seek to understand and incorporate roots through an identification with the land and the topographic islands of memory and emotion that I hope will reach viewers on a visceral level.
While I can plumb my own personal story for subject matter and ask myself what it means to be Portuguese American and an artist of Azorean origins, from the viewpoint on this other side of the world, I carry the weight of a people that were isolated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for 500 years and dreamed of living in other lands, I embrace the challenge to revive and transform tradition, to question assumptions and stereotypes and reinvent roots.
In my paintings of landscapes and portraits you may detect hues and expressions of seedlings that have crossed the oceans, found new colors, new communities of artists, were scattered all over my long voyage, redrawing the map of my identity as a painter.
My work has been variously described in terms of magic realism, expressionism in the Fauve tradition, as having an “exotic, spiritual, magical, surreal, magnetic exuberance.”
For my part I strive to present the viewer with images that are both familiar and alien, that elicit a strong response and maybe a second view, and ultimately defy schools, labels and explanations.
I see myself as a wanderer, exonome in art. I feel privileged to inhabit this nomadic space which allows me to go beyond artificial cultural definitions/limitations and hopefully enter the realm of a primordial and universal
reality.
Keeping in mind the wider context and guiding theme of the projects that I work on – the aesthetical reflection on contemporary Azorean artistic manifestations – I nonetheless leave room for other intangibles pertaining to my craft. While recognizing and asserting origins, one must be careful not to neglect important influences and aspects of one’s art in favor of background. That can or could place an artificial restriction on the artist’s vision.
Exonome is a term which originated in an Internet community some years ago and seeks to define/describe an individual who has lived outside his/her homeland, original place, social group or culture for an extended period of time and “has adapted to the new surroundings without losing awareness or characteristics of his/her origins.” This adaptation does not mean one fully blends in with the new reality; yet one has changed enough to feel somewhat “foreign” in the place of origin.
A full return is therefore never possible. Having wandered about and lived in many different places one can only return as a new entity. One belongs to nowhere and everywhere. This suspended state, this nomadic condition – exo (outside) + nome (possible alter. of nomad) – is in many ways an appropriate symbol or metaphor for the creative life.
The artist is a wayfarer, a nomad, a citizen of the world. This very unsettling and unsettled state constitutes also paradoxically a privileged viewpoint from which to see anew, to recreate one’s world.
As a Portuguese American artists, this journey, or sea voyage in the tradition of the navigators who charted new routes and remapped the world, led me geographically and symbolically across continents, space and time from Vila Franca do Campo in the Azores to California, via New England.
I’m part of a new generation of artists residing in this California where cultural diversity flourishes. We are the originators of new topographies, paradigms, symbols, a particular mode of expression and being that reflect the significant cultural contributions that immigrants have made in this outpost state. Yet we are first and foremost artists and our first allegiance is to our calling and inner vision.
In my work I seek to understand and incorporate roots through an identification with the land and the topographic islands of memory and emotion that I hope will reach viewers on a visceral level.
While I can plumb my own personal story for subject matter and ask myself what it means to be Portuguese American and an artist of Azorean origins, from the viewpoint on this other side of the world, I carry the weight of a people that were isolated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for 500 years and dreamed of living in other lands, I embrace the challenge to revive and transform tradition, to question assumptions and stereotypes and reinvent roots.
In my paintings of landscapes and portraits you may detect hues and expressions of seedlings that have crossed the oceans, found new colors, new communities of artists, were scattered all over my long voyage, redrawing the map of my identity as a painter.
My work has been variously described in terms of magic realism, expressionism in the Fauve tradition, as having an “exotic, spiritual, magical, surreal, magnetic exuberance.”
For my part I strive to present the viewer with images that are both familiar and alien, that elicit a strong response and maybe a second view, and ultimately defy schools, labels and explanations.
I see myself as a wanderer, exonome in art. I feel privileged to inhabit this nomadic space which allows me to go beyond artificial cultural definitions/limitations and hopefully enter the realm of a primordial and universal
reality.
João de Brito
Artista plástico - Natural de V.F. Campo, S. Miguel, Açores, residente em Stª Cruz, Califórnia USA