cristina de middel

Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020


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Boa Noite Povo, 2020



Within the cycles of civilization it is easy to recognize an alternation between the periods of enlightenment, with the weight of development given to reason, science and the myth of common sense, and the periods of obscurantism in which fables, legends, mysticisms return. and in which society seems to advance at a pace of premonitions and skin-deep feelings.

It seems simple to recognize the cycle we are in now, with fanaticism and a resurgence of popular beliefs with Flat Earth believers, and anti-vaccine movements that are steadily rising the volume of noise we generate as cultural beings.

However, this confirmation of the cycle scheme and its alternation, and this reliving of past experiences, as if the lessons of history had faded, merely confirm a human nature that, as frustrating as it may seem, compels us to admit. that exists. It seems that the more human we look, the more animals we become … Unable, as we are demonstrating, to question our unconscious and thoughtless nature.

With the project “Boa Noite Povo” (Good Night, People) we intend to visually investigate through semi-performative experiments the close relationship that exists between Culture and Nature.

We construct narratives that illustrate the current economic and political context using nocturnal animals as improvised actors. It is a mix of archival intervention, directed animal action, night photography and plastic intervention of periodic pieces to show the complexity of the moment and the resonance with the past.

The set of works created should provide a subjective framework for debate and dialogue for a theme that has nurtured the history of philosophy since its inception and also broaden the understanding of the potential of photographic imagery beyond archival and nature photography. For this, two cross lines, one that goes from Culture and Nature and another that goes from the photographic families of the Archive to the Nature Photography, are the ones that mark the playing field in which we developped this visual investigation. The result, a set of images with different techniques that will constitute the record of a visual and conceptual investigation that intends, rather than grounding truths, asking questions and encouraging debate.

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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013


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Party, 2013



“If there is to be a revolution there must be a party”. This is how one of the most iconic and politically engaged book of the century would start if we applied an intentional filter. This filter would hide the parts of the slogans and sentences that eventually got obsolete in the last decades. The book is the Little Red One: “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung”, the second most printed book in History (after the Bible) that can only be found nowadays in China in tourist shops. In an attempt to build a documentary object that pushes the limits of documenting with images, the series “Party” presents a deliberately personal approach to contemporary Chinese society and adds layers of significance by choosing a loaded platform. Using censorship to erase the parts of the text that are no longer in use in the country’s routine, the resulting pages become a script where matching images build a series of diptychs that vehemently raise the question of the real nature of Communism in modern China.

The combination of this manipulated text and image pairs pieces of information that aim to portray China empathetically, appealing to our own clichés towards the country and their bipolar political structure. The series reproduce the matching pages of the book “Party” published by RM and the Archive of Modern Conflict and combine serigraphs of the censored texts with images captured by the artist Cristina De Middel during her trips to China.

Again the artist explores the boundaries and limits in the use of the photographic image to build truthful graphic testimonies and to raise the debate about the construction of the opinion and History and the role that photography has been playing so far.

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