Appleton (Lisboa, PT)
15 Jun — 22 Jul 2021
Curator: David Barro
Pongo mi pie desnudo en el umbral is the final chapter of a project by Christian García Bello (Galicia, 1986) for Appleton (Lisbon, PT) and Fundación DIDAC (Santiago de Compostela, ES), curated by David Barro. This exhibition originates from a short story written by the artist, telling the tale of a discovery: the travel diaries of a woman named Dirse, who made a pilgrimage from Antwerp (Flanders, Belgium) to A Guarda (Galicia, Spain) sometime between the 16th and 17th centuries, spending her final days on Mount Santa Trega, contemplating the route and the mouth of the Miño River—the natural threshold that separates Galicia from Portugal.
The title—a verse by Galician poet José Ángel Valente—suggests a story that begins, that moves forward by walking, touching, stepping, much like the narrative that underpins the project.
This exhibition unfolds as a collection of fragmented and overlapping perspectives on Dirse’s story, punctuating the space and structuring a spatial narrative around landscape, spirituality, ritual, and architecture. It weaves the clarity of vernacular forms with the austerity of materials to construct complex, poetic, and sophisticated devices. The main shift in this second exhibition is the introduction of a series of variations on my own pieces.
