Carlos Arteiro (Vila do Conde, 1992) holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts (Sculpture) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto (2015), with a merit scholarship, and a Master's degree in Contemporary Artistic Practices from the same institution (2017). He was an Erasmus scholarship recipient at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2014-15). He was a finalist for the Novo Banco Revelação 2018 prize awarded by the Serralves Foundation. In 2021, he opened the solo exhibition "Investigations of a Golden Fish," followed by "Mask of Three Beaks" in 2023 at the No-No gallery in Lisbon.
This residency happended in partnership with Mala Voadora and ended with an exhibition and an theater play at Mala Voador.
Carlos Arteiro, Guilherme de Sousa, and Pedro Azevedo are the three artists who participated in the No Entulho residency program by Artworks and are all interested in raising awareness. The result of their work is now collectively presented in Porto, at mala voadora, under the title "Disfarce, disfarce" (Disguise, disguise).
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Carlos Arteiro operates within the realm of fiction. He transports us to a place that is not where we are but rather the realm of commedia dell'arte characters (referring again to theater in his work), particularly Arlecchino, through Giorgio Agamben's perspective on Pulcinella. In this exhibition, Arteiro represents Arlecchino through images that, despite being paintings, have an ambiguous nature, resembling what we associate with photography and virtual reality. The representation of Arlecchino thus benefits from a visual freedom parallel to the freedom of the character itself: his behavior is free because it is strange to the usual relationship established between consciousness and social representation in everyday life and, particularly, in politics. It is a liberally pre-political behavior. Like Pasolini, Agamben interprets humor and grace ideologically, identifying connections between philosophy and comedy to the point of them merging. Faced with this possibility, the combination of the works of the three artists brings us back to the devices of the Sousa/Azevedo duo, seeing the audience
in front of mirrors, ultimately facing the experience of their own grace or the political experience of relating their possibility of grace and self-awareness.
And when we arrive at this identification between philosophy and comedy, it seems even more certain that this project is right to be here, at mala voadora.
