Solar Capital - a solo exhibition by Hugo de Almeida Pinho
As part of Solarity Prospects - Curated by Sara Castelo Branco.
DO 19.10 - SO 5.11
Exhibition opening: DO 19.10, 18H ACUD Galerie
Opening hours: THU-SUN, 15H-19H

Exhibition
Solar Capital by Hugo de Almeida Pinho, with the sound collaboration with Manuel Sékou
Based on certain politics of visibility and invisibility that shape our historical and symbolic relationship with the sun, the exhibition Solar Capital by Hugo de Almeida Pinho, with the sound collaboration by Manuel Sékou, is an installation based on the complexities of solar capitalism, and its different implications and critical realities. Condemning a form of heliocentrism that develops procedures of marginality and appropriation, this installation creates a parallel between contemporary forms of connection between humans, the sun, and technology: the controversial structures of solar energy in the Moroccan region of Ouarzazate; the 'largest artificial sun in the world' created by a German company; and, the sun’s monitoring made by solar physicists to anticipate the occurrence of solar flares that can affect the use of our everyday technology. It’s thus an exhibition about social and political imaginaries that the solar express and determines for the present and the future.

19 October 2023
Lecture-performance
After the Death of the Sun by Luïza Luz

Solarity Prospects
Solarity Prospects is a project that involves platforms for discussions about contemporary and historic politics of the sun. Through a dialogue between philosophy, activism, science and ecological perspectives, Solarity Prospect is composed of a series of actions that invite for a critical and alternative thinking about environmental justice and energy democracy under the sign of sun. In addition to the program at the ACUD Galerie, this project includes a film screening at Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst with works by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Jérôme Cognet, and Susan Schuppli (24 October 2023); and a symposium at ICI – Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, in cooperation with Bard College Berlin, with Angela Anderson, Amanda Boetzkes, Gökçe Günel, Michela Coletta, Michael Marder, Oxana Timofeeva, Ricardo Jorge Gafeira, Kai Koddenbrock (23 October 2023), the symposium is co-organized with Claudia Peppel. (https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/from-solar-futures-to-future-solidarity/).

With support by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Culture Moves – funded by the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut.

BIOS

Hugo de Almeida Pinho lives and works between Karlsruhe and Porto. Graduated in visual arts (Fine Arts Faculty, University of Porto and Fine Arts Faculty, Marmara University, Istanbul), and on a Diploma in media art - moving images at HfG University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe with grantee from Gulbenkian Foundation 2020/22. Artist-in-Residence at Cripta 747, Turin 2021 grantee of Plaka/Shuttle Porto; at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris 2019/20, grantee of Institut Français/Camões Paris; at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2018/19, grantee of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon; Arquipélago - Contemporary Arts Centre, Azores 2015; L’Octroi (Tours - France 2015); among others. Editor of the reader/artist book "Paradox of Plenty" published by Atlas Projectos (2021, Lisbon/Berlin); "Sun Burn" published by Mousse Publishing (2023, Milan); and preparing a new edition to be published in 2024 by Archive Books (Berlin). He has beem presenting his work regularly in independent and institutional spaces since 2009, such as ZKM (Karlsruhe), Fundação Leal Rios (Lisbon), Cripta 747 (Turin), DIDAC (Santiago de Compostela); Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin); Petite Galerie (Paris); Appleton [Box] (Lisbon); São Paulo Cultural Center (Brazil); and The Bermondsey Project (London). He has being curating film screenings at Galerias Municipais de Lisboa, 2020 and at Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin, 2019.

Manuel Sékou is an audio/visual producer, assembler, betrachter, collaborateur, hoarder & gatherer. His work explores contrasts to reveal peculiar patterns, projections, realities and artifacts of the common by exploring styles of language and genre. To trigger contrasts and connections by contextualisation. In search of traces on the periphery aspects of friction, clashes of texture and rhythm, artifacts and association are extended into visual language. He released several projects under the moniker luxxuryproblems, researching forms of expression and meaning between club culture and experimental sound design. In addition to live performances, he’s represented on various international labels/platforms on compilations and appearances with NTS shows.Furthermore he distributes works in the field of self publishing in the recent years.

Luïza Luz investigates multisensorial ways of learning and sharing emancipatory knowledge. Their work spans the human and more than human worlds, engaging with intuitive, theoretical, and practical approaches towards intersectional environmentalism, language, and planetary narratives that actualize the concept of nature as a living entity, and a subject of rights. As an extension of their artistic work, Luïza Luz teaches the seminar "Planetary Embodiment” at the Berlin University of Arts for students and non-students, while concluding their master’s thesis at the Art in Context Institute. Through this course and other projects, they strive to contribute to a broader movement towards structural change, and radical imagination while expanding timelines of care, reparation,
and belonging. They graduated in Visual Arts (2017) and studied with Indigenous authors such as Ailton Krenak and were awarded a scholarship by the Ecologist Fritjof Capra. In 2017 they published the book “T(t)ERRA: Artistic Pedagogical Approaches for The Cultivation of Ecological Cultures”. In 2023 they visited the performance department at the University of Giessen as guest professor on the topic of Planetary Pedagogy, performed at the Montevidéo Marseille in France, presented the solo show "Flourish & Collapse" at Kulturdrogerie in Vienna, Austria, and participated in the group show "Über das Neue" at the museum Belvedere21 Wien. In 2022, they visited the Academy of Fine Arts of Zagreb, Croatia, as guest professor, performed at Documenta15, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Floating E.v, Lios Labs, Vorspiel of CTM/Transmediale Festivals, among others. In 2021 they won the Junge Akademie award from Akademie der Künste for their project "Privilege of Dreaming". The audiovisual performance "AFTER NATURE SOUNDSCAPE" (2020-2023), a collaboration with the artist Vi Amoras, was awarded by the Kommunale Galerie (2021) in Berlin, Germany, and presented at the Documenta15 (2022), at the Floating E.V Berlin (2022), at the Waking Life Festival (2023), at "Creative Code Art", in New York, among others.

Sara Castelo Branco is an independent curator and writer based in Portugal. Her practice centres on interdisciplinary and transhistorical intersections between media cultures, post-digitalism, social resilience and political ecology. She holds a PhD in Arts and Sciences of Art (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne/Universidade Nova de Lisboa), a MA in Art Studies – Art Theory and Criticism (FBAUP), and a BA in Communication and Cultural Sciences (ULP). She is also a guest professor in the MA in Ecology and Aesthetics of Digital Media at the Universidade Católica do Porto. She have curated art exhibitions and artist’s/experimental film screenings in spaces such as Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst, CRIPTA 747, Galerias Municipais de Lisboa or Galeria ZDB. She was also a research/curator-in-residency at CRIPTA747 (Turin) and Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris). In the area of research and art criticism, she contributes regularly with essays for magazines, journals and art catalogues (Mousse, Contemporânea, ATLAS Projectos, Archive Books, among others).

Image: Hugo de Almeida Pinho - Solar Capital, 2023