On affectivity as a process
Miguel Von Hafe Pérez, Setembro, 2005
In catalogue of the exhibition Pele de Embrulho (Wrapping Skin), Galeria Sopro, Lisbon, October 2005
The work of Rute Rosas has been being built on the intersection of forms that denotes a strong vital impulse and the continued exploration of the body as a means of more or less auto-biographical registers. This auto-referential dimension acts more as a starting point by means of which the artist relates herself with her involving world, rather than as a means of questioning social dimension, aesthetic or politics. That is, the means of representation establishes a scale of direct relationship with the admirer, rather than a clarification on any type of biographical narrative. Thus, what has been stressed in the last projects of this artist is a concern with the process within these develops, rather than the conventional structure of presentation/reception of the proposals.
(…) The constant traffic between the affective dimension (the hug) and functional (the paper to wrap up) projects the intervention of the artist, as said, to a plan that tries to confuse the way we conventionally separate the sphere of love from work; of pleasure from productivity. (…)
This optimism and the above mentioned vital impetus that Rute Rosas projects’ denote violently contrast with the pessimism and the state of constant anxiety that contemporary society seems to be condemned to; however, weaving her creative strategy starting from a vision simultaneously ironical and sometimes conflicting with critical questions of the surrounding reality - as for example the roles attributed to women as far as private and public relations are concerned in our society, or in the visibility ways/distribution of the artistic work in a context strongly determined by the economic power that supports it - the artist seems to indicate the space of affectivity as a vital space for balancing the contradictions that mark the rhythm of our actions. Thus, it is with the small gestures and with the small pleasures that we can build positive alternatives to what seems to us inevitable and fatally determined. And it is receiving and facing all type of situations (…) that we become better prepared to know how to value simplicity and the energy of the happy moments from which we so irrationally move away in our daily routines.