ÚLTIMAS CEIAS
INSTALLATION
July 1st to September 30th
Museu de Évora
(10AM-6PM, Wednesday through Sunday / 2.30-6PM, Tuesday)
Closes on Mondays
Museum entrance fee

Jorge de Sousa (PT)
A Última Ceia (2007)
PHOTOGRAPHY

Marcos López (ARG)
La última cena argentina. Asado en Mendiolaza (2001)
PHOTOGRAPHY 90 x 270 cm

Noémia Cruz (PT)
Isto é o meu corpo (1979-2010)
SCULPTURE 58 x 100 x 30cm
SUPPORT 80x100x30 cm

Project by Festival Escrita na Paisagem
Partner Museu de Évora
Curation by Colecção B

Last Supper may be the most repeatedly disseminated theme within the space of Christian-based culture, but it is also one of the most referenced, quoted, and re:mediated by 20th century's art. It is a re:play theme par excellence, inscribing through its own language the re:petition of the redemptive gesture.

At the institutional scene of the Museum of Évora, where we can find two beautiful 16th century paintings representing the Last Supper (one by Mestre do Retábulo da Sé de Évora [The Master Painter of the Altar Piece of Évora's Main Church], and another one by Martin de Vos), the Festival Escrita na Paisagem promotes the encounter between pieces from the Museum's patrimonial collection and contemporary creation, by means of an installation loaded with the critical and discursive gaze of our times.

Noémia Cruz, Jorge de Sousa, Portuguese, and Marcos López, Argentinean, are the authors of the three pieces that bring the dialogue into the Museum, with their works of photography and sculpture, exhibited as an installation. Noémia Cruz, with the re:play of one of her sculptures, originally conceived in 1979, is marked by gender and political resonances.  Bringing the feminine to the scene through the transformation of the bread into a breast, the piece proceeds to a displacement that obviously provides the re:peated Eucharistic gesture with a disruptive tone of the motherly and feminine breast. Marcos López, Argentinean photographer, proceeded to a proletarization of the theme, inscribing the Last Supper into a middle class context, in a generous meal taking place at an idyllic, almost Arcadian scenario, as if the author wanted to empty, by means of everyday life quietness, the tragic and redemptive feeling of the archetype, which is recognizable in the sacrificial carcass that occupies the center of the table (the redemptive lamb, poorly materialized and tasted?). Jorge de Sousa, as it happens with Noémia Cruz, emphasizes the relevance of gender problematization in the contemporary re:makes of Last Supper, composing a scene in search of a theatricalization of relationships (the photo depictures the moment when Jesus announces to the Apostles that one of them will betray him, and it attempts to portrait the reaction of the disciples). Tattoos and garments constitute the space of male social intercourse, near marginal stereotypes, to which even the figure of Christ is not immune.

This dialogic space could be completed with the re:visitation by numerous versions of Last Supper, which the popular contemporary culture spreads in various formats, from cinema to advertisements, and which can be found in abundance for instance at the inexhaustible YouTube and in its persistent look into the future...