Digital HD file, 16:9, 4 minutes and 52 seconds, b&w, sound
Displays a succession of black & white geometric abstract drawings at different stages of composition with sound from a currupted recording of a visual arts and design lesson I delivered in 2010 in São Vicente, Cape Verde.
https://vimeo.com/513798112
Several Ways of Falling Ordered Differently 2019
Digital HD File, 16:9, 4 minutes and 8 seconds, b&w, silent
Performance based video where I fall to the ground several tim es with every mosaic displaying the falls sequenced differently.
https://vimeo.com/335429741
HD File, 16:9, 11 minutes and 18 second, colour, silent
A text that collapses together references to mental health and the state of democracy in Cape Verde and also Portuguese historical events creating a fictional
reality. It runs over low opacity footage of a bouquet of plastic flowers.
https://vimeo.com/349513915
Digital HD file, 16:9, 9 minutes and 43, seconds, b&w, silent
Displays a series of drawings of houses consumed by fire from the inside.
https://vimeo.com/335738356
MiniDV transferred to digital HD file, 4:3, 4minutes and 30 seconds, colour, silent
Single shot footage of a landscape from my native island of Santo Ant‹o in Cape Verde overlayered with different filters runs in parallel with text. The text interweaves extracts from lyrics from 1980s and 1990s Portuguese well known pop songs with extracts from speeches made by the presidents of MPLA and UNITA the two opposing factions during the Angolan civil war (1975 to 2002 with interludes).
https://vimeo.com/349520635
Digital HD file, 16:9, 13 minutes and 14 seconds, b&w, sound
I commissioned an online essay mill company to write an undergraduate level essay on issues of race which runs unevenly spaced and with words crossed out.
https://vimeo.com/248795511
Digital HD file, 16:9, 35 minutes and 39 seconds, b&w, silent
Alternative meanings, often sardonic and suggestive of social-darwinism, are attributed to words found in a glossary of political words.
https://vimeo.com/221405982
White Balance Error (Subject with Straight Long Hair) 2017
Digital HD file, 16:9, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, colour, sound
Performed by Emma.
Referencing traditional western tropes of feminine beauty, a white woman is closely followed with extreme camera close-ups that she systematically rejects turning away.
https://vimeo.com/212415413
Blurred Images of Two People Constrained by Time Fluctuating Be tween Acceptance and Rejection 2016
Digital HD file, 16:9, 4 minutes and 2 seconds, colour, silent.
Performed by Maru and Roberto.
A couple siting in a public space go through a cyclical range of contradictory actions, moving back and forwards between affection and aggression.
https://vimeo.com/186177241
Digital HD file, 16:9, 13 minutes and 22 seconds, b&w, silent
Words that denote status, time and place have been removed from what would otherwise be an informative essay I wrote on James VI of Scotland/James I of
England and (his son) King Charles I's attitudes to power.
https://vimeo.com/125368000
.png)
Digital file from MiniDv tape, 4:3, 13 minutes and 13 seconds, colour, sound
An unedited essay I wrote in 2010 in Accra in English in relation to the Dak'Art 2010 African Contemporary Art Biennial's exhibition at the IFAN Museum
of African Arts in Dakar is read by an open-source text-to-voice software application that makes errors every-time it reads African language based words.
https://vimeo.com/170237475
Digital HD file from found text: 16:9, 11 minutes and 55 seconds, b&w, silent
Text based video work composed of phrases extracted from profile descriptions of female porn-actors listed on a website specialising on white-female/blackmale
interracial pornographic content. The phrases which play on racial stereotypes have words with explicit content and other offensive meanings removed.
https://vimeo.com/125348605
Digital HD file, 16:9, 10 minutes and 26 seconds, b&w, sound
Displays neologisms, aimed at enriching the vocabulary of the substra tum creole language of Cape Verde which is spoken in informal contexts. Based on my experience of living and working in my native Cape Verde with the neologisms, made from names of Portuguese colonial administrators and names of Greek mythology characters, I propose parallels between colonial history and the social dynamics that have emerged in the country since 1990 with end of a singleparty Marxist regime that gave way to parliamentary democracy and free market economy.
https://vimeo.com/125346710
Metathesiophobia 2011
Digital HD file, 16:9, 100 minutes and 54 seconds, b&w, sound
Performers: Elisabete Goncalves, Zenaida Alfama Medina and Irineu Destourelles/ Camera: Luís Carlos Fontes de Alencar Filho and Mamadou Diop/ Direct sound: by David Medina.
With thanks to Joel Zito Araujo
A cropped long single-shot of three characters sitting at a table whom with repetitive actions split and pack the white powdery content of plastic containers.
The voiceover is an - at first - imperceptibly adulterated audiobook of Rene Descartes's 'Meditations on First Philosophy' (1641).
https://vimeo.com/51804614
.png)
Digital file from MiniDv tape: 4:3, 17 minutes and 31 seconds, colour, silent
Playing on our understanding of time in relation to movement, when there is no movement within the frame the speed of the footage is drastically diminished without this being perceptible.
https://vimeo.com/359584391
Digital file from MiniDV, 2 minutes 28 seconds, colour, silent
Single shot of two candles burning.
https://vimeo.com/487298234
About
I am a visual artist working with moving-image, writing, drawing and painting. Reflecting on my experiences of creolity and diaspora my practice is underpinned by a speculative treatment of identity as an unsettled and paradoxical construct. I was born in Cape Verde and I am based in Glasgow (UK).
Solo Exhibitions
2022 Videos and Texts, PICTO — Espace de Production Artistique, Geneva, Switzerland
2020 A Batida Que Faz-te Sujo (The Beat That Makes You Dirty), CAPC - Circulo de Artes Plasticas de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
2019 Subtitulizar/Subtitling, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 Tainted Verbal, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2017 Unturning, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2014 Autoestrangeirismo , Atelier Concorde, Lisbon, Portugal
2011 Thinking According to Rectangular Images, Portuguese Institute - Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
Group Exhibitions
2021 O Silencio da Terra, Galeria do Paco, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
2020 History as Fiction, Fiction as History, Hangar Online [Hangar, Lisbon] https://hangar.com.pt/online/history-as-fiction-fiction-as-history/
2019 Apa Kabar? (What's new?), Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2019 South-South: Between Land and Sea Film Programme, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2019 Another Country II, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2018 Another Country, Alice R. Rogers & Target Galleries, St John’s Art Centre, Minnesota, USA
2017 A Glimmer of Freedom (Unsolicited Exhibition Program, Apexart, New York), Tarrafal Concentration Camp, Santiago, Cape Verde
2016 Being and Becoming: Complexities of the African Identity, UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
2015 Telling Time [Special Exhibition], Rencontres de Bamako Biennale (10th edition), Memorial Modibo Keita, Bamako, Mali
2015 Customer Experience, Special Projects, VI Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia
2015 Sex Macht Gut/ Sex Does Good, Sprechsall, Berlin, Germany
2014 Ilha de Sao Jorge, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore island, Venice, Italy
2013 Southern Panoramas, Videobrasil 18, SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo, Brazil [irdc]
2013 Escena Caboverdiana, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain [irdc]
Group Screenings/ Festivals
2018 AfroScots: Glasgow School of Art, Scotland; and Edinburgh School of Art, Scotland, UK
2017 Africas Utopicas (selected works from Videobrasil Collection), Espaco Transversal da ArtRio 2017, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [irdc]
2017 Bomb Factory Artist Film Festival IV, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, England, UK
2017 AfroScots, Galerie de l'Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Canada
2015 Ilha de Sao Jorge: ICA London, England; and Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy
2015 Capture All, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany
2021 talk with Sofia L. Borges, PICTO — Espace de Production Artistique, Geneva, Switzerland
2019 talk, Irineu Destourelles and Ângela Ferreira, International Meetings Where I (we) Stand, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 presentation and panel discussion, Collective Blackness (artist presentations organised by Black Radical Imagination and LUX Scotland), Talbot Rice Gallery,
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 presentation, A Glimmer of Freedom (research seminar) CITCEM - Transdisciplinar Investigation Centre, University of Porto, Portugal
2017 talk with Neil Cooper and Holly Knox Yeoman with Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 talk with with Tiffany Boyle (Mother Tongue), Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2015 talk with Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy
2015 presentation and talk with Ana Balona de Oliveira and Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Hangar Artistic Research Center, Lisbon, Portugal
2013 talk with Tchale Figueira, Leao Lopes and Orlando Britto Jinorio, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain
2011 panel discussions co-chair with Rita Lobo, Mindelo, Do We Have Culture? Series of Public Meetings, Various Venues across Mindelo, Cape Verde
2021-2022 Deveron Projects, Huntly, Scotland, UK
2015 (July) Hangar, Lisbon, Portugal
Alvaro Luis Lima, 'A House of Fire: the Diaspora of Irineu Destourelles', in Atlantica: Contemporary Art From Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome e Principe and their Diasporas, Hangar Books, Lisbon (2021) pp. 74-86.
Claudia Sobral, 'Se o fantasma de João de Sá Panasco vagueasse por Lisboa', Semanario O Novo, Lisboa (19.11.2021), pp. 60-61.
Irineu Destourelles, 'Citacoes do Antigo Presidente do Conselho de Ministros Traduzidas para Um Crioulo Pessoal', in Lingua-Lugar: Literatura Historia Estudos Culturais (N.02) Geneva University and Zurich University, 2020
Cristina Campos, 'Irineu Destourelles – Subtitling, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum', Umbigo Magazine, Lisbon, 2019, p. 26.
Rita Fabiana, I am not here. I am here Notes on an accidental body-place, Museum Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2019
Neil Cooper, 'Irineu Destourelles – Unturning', productmagazine.co.uk, (07/10/2017)
Ana Nolasco, 'Entrevista a Irineu Destourelles: Verifebura: Prática Colonial e Consciência Pós-colonial’, Buala.org (28/03/2016)
MA Fine-Arts Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London, England, UK
BA Fine-Arts Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Contact
mail@irineudestourelles.com