Between the infinitely large of the Cosmos and the infinitely small of everyday life, “In an Infinite Blow – Her family album” simulates a journey through observations of space by the Hubble telescope, replacing the stars with fragments of photographs from a family album.
The sound is produced by human breathing and with each blow we are taken on a journey between remains or pieces of someone’s memories, galaxies of experiences interspersed by the empty and black space of oblivion, reflecting thus what remains after our brief existence in this universe.

Carla Cabanas (Lisbon, 1979). Her work revolves around the methodologies of stretching the defined borders of the photography medium while dwelling on the issues of collective and cultural memory. She has presented her work in several institutions, galleries and Biennials such as the National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon; Coimbra Contemporary Art Center; Gallery Carlos Carvalho – Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon; Appleton [Box], Lisbon; Centre Photographique d’Île de France; Arquipélago – Contemporary Arts Centre, Azores; Brotéria, Lisbon; MAAT-Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia, Lisbon; Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon; Centre D’art Contemporain, Meymac, France; Aa Collections Gallery, Vienna; Biennale de l’Image Tangible, Paris; Grimmmuseum, Berlin; Castello Visconteo Di Legnano, Milan, Italy; Panal 361, Buenos Aires, Argentina; City Museum, Lisbon; 7ª Biennial São Tomé e Príncipe; Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid and CCCB – Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. 

In 2022, she was a finalist for the FLAD Drawing Prize from the Luso-American Development Foundation. In 2012, Cabanas received an Honourable Mention in the Purificacion Garcia Photography Prize and 3rd place at the Ariane de Rothschild Painting Prize in 2005. In 2010/2011, she received a grant from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture to live in Antwerp and work as an assistant to David Claerbout.

She also attended artistic residencies in Austria, Germany, São Tomé and Principe and several in Portugal.

Work by the artist is held in prominent collections, including the National Gallery of Art Washington, DC; Luso-American Development Foundation; LPS Collection, Colección Kells, Santander; PLMJ Foundation Collection; Novo Banco Art Collection; Lisbon City Hall and other private collections.

In “Video killed the painting stars (M. Ray)”, from 2021, a hand enters the image. The single shot is one of the elements that defines the work in temporal terms, leading to a reading of time and space: the representation space is that and that is where whatever happens will take place. This hand appears in the frame of the image: La Vénus del Espejo by Velázquez (1647-1651) and draws something that is not immediately recognizable, a kind of inscription. 

Another duplication, Le Violon d’Ingres (Man Ray), using Ingres’ pictorial work as a reference, photographs Kiki of Montparnasse, in a pose close to his nudes. In this photograph he draws the f-holes at the top of the violins (this is also a space between the inside and the outside — a place for breathing). José Maçãs de Carvalho repeats the gesture. 

“Video killed the painting stars (M. Ray)” is a succession of duplications, of folds all condensed into one element: the reflection in the mirror of Venus. A round look, a look that returns, an image that looks back again. (Ana Rito)

José Maçãs de Carvalho (Anadia, Portugal, 1960) 

After obtaining a first degree in Modern Languages and Literature (Coimbra University, Portugal), he completed a postgraduate course in Management of the Arts (Institute of European Studies in Macau, 1998) in Macau where he taught and lived from 1994 to 1999. He obtained a Phd in Contemporary Art at  Colégio das Artes, University of Coimbra, Portugal, in 2014. 

He teaches at the University of Coimbra, in the Architecture Department and Colégio das Artes where he is the Supervisor of the Master degree in Curatorship, together with Ana Rito. Since 2020 he is the curator of the Coimbra Contemporary Art Center.
He has received scholarships from Fundação Gulbenkian (1994), Fundação Oriente (1999-2001), Instituto Camões (2001) and Centro Português de Fotografia (2003). He has works (photographs and videos) in several public and private art collections .

He was both curator and participant in the exhibition My own private pictures (Plataforma Revólver, LisbonPhoto Biennial, 2005), which lay at the origin of his nomination for the BES Photo Prize in 2005 (most important prize for photography in Portugal).In 2008 was shortlisted for the Pictet Prix (Suisse Bank Award for Photography). 

He´s been showing photography since the early 90s  and video since the 2000s. In 2013 showed videos in New York and Paris (« Fuso NY”, Union Square Park, and “Chantiers d´Europe”, Theatre de la Ville), and in 2011 in Oslo (“When a painting moves…something must be rotten!”, Stenersen Museum). Between 2011 and 2017 set up seven exhibitions as a practical project for his doctoral programme around the subject of archive and memory at CAV, Coimbra; Ateliers Concorde, Lisbon and Colégio das Artes, Coimbra; VPF gallery, Lisbon; The City Hall Photographic Archive, Lisbon, Museu do Chiado and MAAT Museum in Lisbon and a book, “Unpacking: a desire for the archive”, was published by StolenBooks. In 2015, a book of photographs, “Partir por todos os dias”, was published by Editora Amieira. In 2016 his photographic work about Oporto university campus was published on a book called “Aspela” by Scopio Editions and Oporto Polytechnic Institute.

In 2016 the book “Archive and Apparatus” was published by  Centro de Arte de S. J. da Madeira and in   2017 also the book “Archive and Interval”, by Stolen Books/Colégio das Artes-Universidade de Coimbra and MAAT Museum, with contributions by Pedro Pousada, José Bragança de Miranda, Adelaide Ginga and Ana Rito.