"Mãos sobre a Cidade" exhibition at the Braga Campus

Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) and the Serralves Foundation are inaugurating the exhibition "Mãos sobre a cidade. Investigações artísticas no meio urbano - E. M. de Melo e Castro" (Artistic investigations in the urban environment - E. M. de Melo e Castro), on February 6, at 6:30 p.m., in the Biblioteca Padre Júlio Fragata, SJ, at the UCP Braga Regional Centre.

Developed specifically for the four campi of the Universidade Católica, the exhibition includes a group of works by the artist, poet and essayist E. M. de Melo e Castro, whose practice was decisively marked by the revolution of April 25, 1974.

A central figure in Portuguese Experimental Poetry, Melo e Castro closely examined the profusion of graphic interventions that marked the national territory during the post-revolutionary period, taking a particular interest in the appropriation of road signs as support for political messages that subverted their original meaning.

The exhibition features the famous work Sinais (1976/1997), conceived during this period, as well as a collection of documents that reveal the outlines of the research carried out by the artist in this context.

Mãos sobre a cidade also includes an exhibition section that brings together works by various artists on the Lisbon campus, and will also feature works by the artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Pedro Barateiro, to be inaugurated on February 28 and 29 at UCP's Viseu and Porto Regional Centres.

This exhibition, curated by Joana Valsassina, is the 3rd initiative organized as part of UCP's membership of the Serralves Foundation's Founding Board and is part of the Serralves Collection's Itinerant Exhibitions Programme, which aims to make the Foundation's collection accessible to diverse audiences in all regions of the country.