"why do you hide in the black bushes"

venue cooperativa árvore | porto 2019

linocut matrix and print: 480cm x 220cm
wood and metal sculpture

berardo collection

photo by jp narciso

fig. 1, 2 , 3 details from linocut print
fabriano rosaspina 285g/m  | 1/1

perfomance/ soundscape
Nils Meisel

fig 1, 2 , 3 ,4  details from the sculpture and the linocut matrix

artist’s book on a plinth and valério´s poem on the wall

photo by jp narciso

There was a time of big bushes dying in disarray
A time of fire in which even the shadows were forced to emigrate
There was a time as shallow as the ground where all men and women
Lined up like the beasts on their way to the great slaughter
They were just extras for the great flood procession
It was a rarefied time of smiles a time of cut wrists
Dreams lived hidden under the floor
They didn't go out at night, they lost their teeth, they never danced
A time to crown the glory of scavengers A time to breathe lead
We'll never know how it started when
Who installed sadness as a flag suffering as a hymn
People were at home on their chores, animals grazed
The moon softened quietly on summer nights over the lakes
And suddenly that miracle appeared, unlike that wound in the sky
We had tamed the birds' cadence the winter the puddles of light
You entered the houses through the wide door of the heart
and unknown was an archaism
And the embrace the maximum span of distance between two tangent bodies
We followed the rules of the creator the laws of man school hours
We waited for the introduction of the smile as a lingua franca
Nobody took their hands to heaven nobody asked for anything
We lived in each moment the identity in the right measure
Nobody courted the dismay that followed nobody dared
Nobody wants to be here nobody knows how to leave
If only death knew how to find this place.

Valério Romão