About —
This major exhibition of the contemporary Portuguese artist Vasco Araújo features four videos: The Girl from the Golden West (2004), O Jardim (2005), About Being Different (2007) and his latest production O Percurso (2009). Meditating on the theme of identity and dealing with issues of citizenship and territorial belonging, they invite the viewer to reflect on questions of justice, ethics and equality amongst people.
Araújo is part of a new generation of Portuguese artists for whom art is conceptual, multidisciplinary and polysemic, and a means for constructing thoughtprovoking narratives. In his productions Araújo tells stories that deal with the human condition, the complexity of the individual, the social dimensions of seduction and the games played by the powerful. Using the landscape, myths and famous operas as narrative frameworks, he examines cultural stereotypes in relation to individuals who are socially marginalized because of different cultural beliefs.
Biography —
Vasco Araújo is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work has been the subject of numerous solo shows, the most recent of which are at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and at the Boston Center for the Arts in England 2008, and at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in England in 2007. In 2005 he showed at the 51st Venice Biennial. Organized by the Musée d’art de Joliette, With the Voices of the Other is Araújo’s first exhibition in Canada and the first solo exhibition of a contemporary Portuguese artist ever to be presented in this country.