I am writing this text from a porch in Praia Formosa (Santa Maria – Azores). The mention of the location is only relevant to make me feel closer to Praia Formosa (Madeira) from Lourdes Castro’s childhood. As if I wanted to have a special connection to one of the most important visual artists of the 20th century in Portugal. As if I wanted to validate that our primary places are always present in the construction of who we are.

I cannot deny how much the shadows, the cut-out lines, the sheets embroidered with the threads of imagination, and the notion that the limits of objects transcend us touch me. The limit presents itself as a rupture between two poles; it is two-dimensional, and it offers us the beauty of opposites. Everything will always be the possibility of its opposite.

It was the shadow that illuminated Lourdes Castro’s work. The woman who was not afraid to break with the formalism of classical painting, at a time when the intersection of media and artistic disciplines did not assume an aesthetic predominance. There is much of a nouvelle vague coming from her stay in France, but above all, there is an intrinsic identity that thinks about the transformation of an artistic work outside the wall. Lourdes Castro established a relationship between the vertical and the horizontal, gave movement to static work, made the use of flourishing a constant to emphasize limits, and demonstrated that shadow can have/give more than the real object. “Shadows seem to fly,” she said. There is something very pure, naive, and simple in her work. Perhaps that is why it has become so impactful and beautiful.

All this comes in the wake of the opening of the exhibition “Lourdes Castro: There is Light in the Shadow,” which opens this Saturday, September 13, at Arquipélago – Center for Contemporary Arts. We have been waiting for it for a long time. The first in the Azores, part of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Network, it marks the beginning of a nationwide tour of the artist’s work.

It will be a moment to immerse ourselves in the life and work of Lourdes Castro. I hope that in her Family Albums, in her Great Herbarium of Shadows, in KWY magazine, and in her meditative work that goes beyond what hangs on the walls and extends into a wandering movement that only her shadows offer us.

An exhibition to mark in our calendars and celebrate contemporary art, which will continue to be in the spotlight with the start of Walk&Talk – Biennial of Arts, from September 25, on the island of São Miguel, under the motto “Gestures of Abundance.”

On my porch in Praia Formosa, I enjoy a summer that ends with this contemporary abundance. Two artistic projects that are the pillars of modern art in the Azores. We will fly with these shadows of encouragement for freedom.

September 12, 2025

Helena Barros

Translated by Diniz Borges