Sofia Lemos

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Musa paradisiaca: Curveball Memory (2022)
A solo exhibition of newly commissioned textual, sound-based, filmic, sculptural and performative objects for Galeria Municipal do Porto


Musa paradisiaca: Curveball Memory. Multi-channel installation composed of synchronised 16mm film transferred to video, slide projections, and sculptures assembled on reflective stage-like structures illuminated by coloured lighting. Installation view at Galeria Municipal do Porto (2018). Photos: Dinis Santos. Courtesy of the artists and Galeria Municipal do Porto.



Drawing from polyvocality and the coming-together of objects, forms and words, Musa paradisiaca—a dialogue-based artistic project by Portuguese artists, Eduardo Guerra and Miguel Ferrão—conveys the diverse entities and tutelary figures the duo has incorporated into its practice. The artists recognised in the early stages of their practice that conversation can generate a singular entity that overflows any correlation between kin and kind. Conversation, which puts forth the sense of self—of one who speaks and another who listens—is also a word that derives from being together in conversion, giving way to a space in which each person, or each thing, emerges in a distinct albeit related manner.

A project about conversation as co-presence, Curveball Memory staged these elements as transitory memories and in-between states, materialising its continuous transformation through oral, textual, sound, film, sculptural and performative objects. The exhibition departed from the potential of dialogue to emancipate language from the domain of human consciousness, listening to things often represented as silent.




Views on Misunderstanding is the first monograph of Musa paradisiaca's work spanning its universe to date. Richly illustrated, and composed using a process of accretion of works realised in different media—sculptural, pictorial, textual, or sound-based—the images establish dialogues that would otherwise be inaudible. Conveying a series of voices gathered from and around Musa paradisiaca, the publication includes newly commissioned essays by Caustrino Jesus de Alcântara, Miguel Ferrão, Eduardo Guerra, Sofia Lemos, João Mourão, Filipa Oliveira, Maria Filomena Molder, Maro Pasi, Claudia Pestana, Luís Silva, and Elfi Turpin.

English and Portuguese
21x29,7 cm, 200 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-3-964360-08-3
Design: Raquel Pinto
Publisher: Bom dia Books
Co-edited with Miguel Ferrão, Eduardo Guerra, and Claudia Pestana

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Curatorial introduction