Madina Zingashina

It is almost only the ancient cities, those witch grown without a premeditated plan, that are able to endow the content to their aesthetic shapes: here forms, which were born out of human intentions and which appear as mere materializations of the spirit and of the will, represent, by their conjugation, a value that goes beyond these intentions; and which makes them expand as an opus superer ogationis (...) and the distances between the eras, styles, personalities and vital contents, that have left their marks here, are as broad as nowhere else in the world, yet are woven into unity, harmony and affinity ...

Georg Simmel wrote those words about Rome, but they equally describe Braga so well. An art historian far from the twentieth century mainstream art critical discussion about the legitimacy of the artwork, about the death of art, and the pursuit of beauty. Simmel gave a simple answer to the complex labyrinth of questions of "what is art?" Art, like beauty, he said, is a privilege, which resides in the capacity of distinguishing, seeing the relations and making sense in one’s own mind, out of the multiplicity of objects, facts or phenomena. Simmel, probably a devotee of the Romantic school, also noted, that natural objects contain an aesthetic potential: harmony or stress of totality of parts or of elements reveal the immediate beauty; while harmony as such does not exist in manmade creations; only time can provide them an aesthetical completeness. In Braga, this statement does not even need demonstration, it is explicit and impressive.

This is an ancient Portuguese city, with thousands of years of history, whose relics and scars are manifest themselves on the face of the city through archelogy and architecture, and the city is alive, cheerful and young in spirit. Demographically the youngest city of Portugal, Braga remembers, summons up and celebrates all its eras, from Roman to Modern, throughout the year. While the cherishing of the past is construct on memory and archive, where all the preceding ages, styles and symbols are at peace with each other under the umbrella of the heritage, the present is still unconquered, unrolling, controversial. When there are no tensions between Roman, Gothic, Baroque, or Manueline styles, which are often composed one over another; time is the perfect artist which erects, forgets and mixes; the page of contemporary art is not listed yet, the discourse is being constructed on the celebration of its difference from the past eras.

This is an excerpt from the text of the catalog by:

Madina Zingashina, curator of the project ART-MAP Braga 2017