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Rodrigo Vilhena is the director of Voyeur Project View, Lisbon.
Image courtesy of Voyeur Project View.I am an artist that started organizing different alternative exhibitions between the cities of Caldas da Rainha and Lisbon in the 90s. Since 2000, my artistic practice has involved a curatorial process in which the artist is a receptor that interacts with culture. Since 2005, I have been working on a project called Voyeur Project View, an alternative space located in the Anjos quarter of Lisbon. Voyeur Project View solo exhibitions are shown to the public through a peephole in a door that can be accessed 24 hours a day. This work in progress is a project integrated into my own artistic practice. It implies partnership as a way of seeing the space through a group of different artists. It is a studio with special features. The process of collaboration in each exhibition is an integral part of the artistic project. In this sense Voyeur Project View is a laboratory of contemporary art.
A work titled Voyeur by Julião Sarmento was on view in February. In a text by Ana Anacleto the work is presented as a video. She writes, “The video Voyeur runs for approximately 14 minutes. In this work we attend the idea of circularity involved in the double condition of being, first as a voyeur, and second as an object. This is reinforced by the presence of an apparent linearity in which short moments arise when the choice of the point of view… and the constant approximations and setbacks in relation to the object, call on our filmic memory, and put us inside the work, making us therefore voyeurs and spectators.”
When spectators arrive at the peephole, what they see is not the video that Ana refers to, but rather a space that is almost empty. The red floor is not clean. There is dust, and the electric cable is not connected. Hanging on a naked wall we see a “cutelo,” the Portuguese name for a knife with a large blade to cut meat. The emptiness of the space and the “cutelo” are intriguing metaphors for the public imagination, and evoke film culture. Meanwhile, as the other spectators wait for their chance to see the work, they are also waiting to play their part as voyeurs; we are seeing the others seeing, indeed the possibility of any act of seeing terminates itself necessarily as an act of voyeurism. What is the artist questioning? Who possesses the power? Is it the person looking, or the one that has what the other desires? Furthermore, what is the object of desire? In the end, it is the voyeur who is empowered, because it is the viewer who understands that the act of seeing is different from the act of looking. Julião Sarmento´s work always takes multiple approaches to the notion of the point of view. His intention is to explore the relationship with the viewer and to dissolve or combine the presented “image” with different modes of representation and comprehension.
Julião Sarmento (b. 1948) is at present one of the most international and influential artists in Portugal. His work reveals a realm of unconscious beauty, voyeurism, sensuality, and fetishism apparent in everyday images. In the 1970s he began working with film, video, sound, painting, sculpture, installation, and multimedia. He combined these, developing exhibition-specific projects. He has exhibited extensively worldwide since 1979 and his work is represented in public and private collections worldwide. Socrates said: “I’m not a citizen of Athens, but a citizen of the world.” The same could be said of Sarmento. He is not a Portuguese artist, but an artist of the world.
