© Bruno Monteiro
It was on the 30th of April that we inaugurated the photographic exhibition Visões, by Sónia Godinho, next to the old locomotive maintenance workshops of the mining complex.
Looking at this landscape of infinite possibilities, Sónia Godinho, a photographer invited by the MALACATE project, challenged the children of Escola da Mina to imagine this place in an alternative way. How could these children - who did not live in the times that only old photographs document - look at the stone giants and the wastelands? Is this a magical place where buildings and stones hide fantastic secrets?
After several working sessions between the photographer and the children, it was discovered what happens here when no one is looking: a strange power emanates from these ores, transforming those who really believe into wonderful creatures, which are an unexpected mixture of animals that everyone knows. This isn't just a place of ancient ghosts. Here inhabits new desires, visible only to those who are more attentive and who, for a moment, have the courage to let themselves be carried away by the imagination.
The children created through traditional collage the aesthetic basis of what would become a set of dreamlike figures made later through digital photographic collage and large format printing.
© Rita Pico
The inauguration included the presentation of the MALACATE project and the photographic exhibition by the artistic directors Filipe Abreu and Miguel Maia and the photographer Sónia Godinho, followed by a presentation by some of the children from the school at Mina de São Domingos, who had the help of Mariana Portugal Dias, a teacher who has been working with the school through MALACATE, in the Curriculum Enrichment Activities.
The exhibition is now present next to the old locomotive maintenance workshops for all visitors to the mining complex, giving a new vision of imagination and possibilities to this landscape.
© Rita Pico e Bruno Monteiro