RESTOS E RECANTOS by Mariana Laginha

Looking is an act of choice. Among everything that happens around us, the gaze selects, draws near, lingers, or lets things pass by. There are things that, because we see them so often, we no longer notice; others that we only discover when we pause. It is in this interval between looking, seeing, and looking away that RESTOS E RECANTOS (REMNANTS AND HIDDEN CORNERS) unfolds, an exhibition about attention, the passage of time, and what remains when almost everything seems destined to disappear.

Mariana Laginha’s practice establishes a close relationship between painting and photography, exploring issues of identity, belonging, and displacement. In Restos, based on photographs from her personal archive, the artist recovers fragments of the urban landscape and objects that have been abandoned or have simply ceased to be relevant. Isolated from their original context and transposed into painting, they cease to be secondary elements and take center stage in the image. What was discarded gains a new existence and another possibility of permanence.

In Recantos, the relationship with time is different. The gaze remains in the present and lingers on elements of the natural landscape that are part of everyday life: the light filtering through the trees, the shapes of a tree trunk, or roots emerging from the ground. Painted on site, these works stem from direct, prolonged observation of fleeting moments, seeking to capture what, for a brief instant, presents itself to the eye before it changes. Painting thus becomes a way of remaining in the presence of what is here and now, giving time to what usually goes unnoticed.

The two series thus establish different relationships with time and observation. Restos starts from images that already belong to the past to recover what has been left behind; Recantos seeks to linger in the present, before it, too, disappears. In one, photography functions as a trace; in the other, direct observation brings the painting closer to lived experience.

Between abandonment and presence, between what has already disappeared and what is about to disappear, Mariana Laginha constructs a geography of attention. Restos and Recantos do not seek to make the extraordinary visible, but rather to restore importance to what usually goes unnoticed. Perhaps looking is, after all, a way of saying that something matters, and painting, a way of granting it time.

The opening will take place on Friday, September 18, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm.
This show will be on display until October 10, and admission is free.

BIOGRAPHY

Mariana Laginha (Setúbal, 1991) is a Portuguese visual artist whose practice centers on painting. She develops a contemporary artistic language of a distinctly introspective nature, closely linked to photography, a field in which she specialized early in her career. Her figurative work often depicts scenes from everyday life and abandoned objects, evoking processes of emotional and social adaptation.

Her artistic journey began in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Since completing her bachelor’s degree in Painting at the University of Évora, she has regularly exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions.