Museu da Água (núcleo dos Barbadinhos)
Rua Alviela 12 , 1170-012 Lisboa
3ª a dom. - 10h00 > 17h30
20/10 - 30/10/2023
João Mariano
JOÃO MARIANO
Entre as águas
(…) … the stories you tell with these pictures seem to belong to a cosmic time that doesn’t square with the vertigo of our mundane time, and hence, they teach us that the depth of existence is wide and mysterious. We can hear the ancestral voices of the water nymphs, the naiads in their fountains and the nereids in the sea, when you sensuously touch the faces of unknown divinities that live among branches, water springs and stones. It is a book filled with poetry and intimacy, which dialogs with our human condition.
(…)
In these images, we hear the echoes of elves, nymphs and witches that emerge from dark and rugged beds. Nature is as much a place of peace and pubescent dream as one of brutality and inhospitable violence. Traveling through this body of work is akin to wrestling. Between life and death, all masks fall apart, all simulacra break down. The experience of these concrete abstractions transforms nature and human into a poem that flows everlastingly. Melancholy, fear and aggression add to the ecstasy of discovery, to the warm sense of belonging and to the feelings that project in chosen waves of light.
Ricardo Bento
Photographer and Researcher CICS.NOVA – Universidade Nova de Lisboa
English 
Portuguese