Joana de Oliviera Guerreiro (13/11/19)
I wish I had seen Joana’s work before I heard her lecture. I think I would have liked it more.
Such an adventurous CV as the one owned by Joana de Oliveira Guerreiro; working for NATO, as a chef (with no cooking experience), moving to another country for university, gives the impression of a focused, determined, confident, outgoing, person. This was not necessarily the way Guerreiro presented herself to us, she was spoke softly, and slowly (excellent for note-taking), she meandered around her life story in a vaguely chronological order - not really what I was expecting. She seemed to me to be a person filled with contradictions; she left her job at NATO improving the lives of women and children in war zones to come to Liverpool and be an artist, she uses only found materials in her artworks but also criticises the place where she lives for having those materials available, and so close to her (she lives on the docks...), she paints naked women surrounded by clothed men, and yet claims to be questioning gender roles and biases... but doesn’t flip the roles unless the woman is still in a subservient, sexualised role.
Last week Matthew Merince spoke about removing the artists voice from their work, here Guerreiro acknowledged that her work has been ‘misinterpreted’, instead of allowing the viewer to interpret the work as they pleased, Guerreiro made the choice to include guiding poetry alongside her work to prevent misunderstanding. I’m not totally against the choice to include written work as a companion to a painting or sculpture but using poetry as a preventative tool for misinterpretation feels like she is removing the viewers right to their own experience.
I like her work - I don’t like it’s context.
