The Douro International Engraving Biennial starts this Thursday, in Régua, runs until October, honors 26 artists and includes 15 exhibitions spread across six municipalities, with 800 works by 500 authors.
The Douro Biennale was born in 2001 with the ambition of decentralizing culture and promoting the art of engraving. "In 2023, there will be 800 works and 500 artists from 65 countries. In total there will be 15 exhibitions spread across six municipalities", the curator of the Douro Biennale, Nuno Canelas, told the Lusa agency.
The person responsible said that the initiative will be "in the main cultural spaces" of the Douro and Trás-os-Montes, such as the Côa Museum, the Miguel Torga Space, the Flaviense Region Museum and the Douro Museum (Peso da Régua) where, this Thursday, the official start of the 11th edition takes place.
In what is the only engraving biennial in the country, the exhibitions are distributed across the municipalities of Alijó, Chaves, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Peso da Régua, Sabrosa and Vila Real, ending the event on October 31st.
The initiative represents traditional engraving as well as renewed trends in digital engraving and new media. In each of the previous editions, only one artist was honored, but, according to Nuno Canelas, this year the biennial will "honor 26 artists", which also includes the 11 honored in previous editions.
According to the organization, the featured artists in 2023 are Octave Landuyt, Vieira da Silva, Nadir Afonso, Gil Teixeira Lopes, Paula Rego, Antoni Tàpies, Bartolomeu dos Santos, Júlio Pomar, José de Guimarães, Silvestre Pestana, José Rodrigues, Ângelo de Sousa, Júlio Resende, Sá Nogueira, Graça Morais, Cruzeiro Seixas, Henrique Silva, Fernando Lanhas, Lima de Freitas, Irene Ribeiro, Herten, Iuji Hiratsuka, Noguchi Akèmi, Tomiyuki Sakuta, Masataka Kuroyanagi and Weisbuch.
"I would say that it is the exhibition that stands out the most and will be on display at the Douro Museum", pointed out Nuno Canelas.
The program also features the "Xylon Austria" exhibition, by Austrian authors, as well as an exhibition of works by the biennale's commissioners (who help organize the event) and conferences and workshops.
Over the years there has been talk of creating a space to house the collection of this biennial.
"I would say that this is the weak point of the biennial because there is a vast collection of the 11 editions held and also the five editions of Global Print. In other words, we have already had 16 events held in 22 years and I have already lost count of the number of engravings that exist in this collection and we are talking about a collection that does not have a home", highlighted the person in charge.
Generally, he added, "you build a museum and there's nothing to put there and here it's the opposite."
"We have a vast collection and we don't have an appropriate place to exhibit thousands of works from all over the world. It's a fantastic collection and it's regrettable that it doesn't exist, and I know this because it's a constant struggle, a desire at the regional level and at the intermunicipal communities to take the step forward so that there is a Museum of Contemporary Engraving as there is, for example, the Côa Museum linked to rock engraving", he stated.
Finally, Nuno Canelas called on people to "seek culture" and visit the 15 exhibitions, at the same time as discovering the region where they are on display.
SOURCE: Notícias ao Minuto