The Ubiquitous Statue of Fernando Pessoa

About_Pessoa&Statue.txt
Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet who, over the course of his life, used his writing to unfold his identity into multiple characters he called “heteronyms“, or other versions of himself. Between 1888 and 1937 he created more than 70 of these characters, many of them complete with birthdays, curricula, backgrounds, ideological positions, different levels of education and control over the Portuguese language. The poet worked a day job as a translator and only published one book before passing away on November 30th, from hepatic colic, at 47 years old. With him died many of these heteronyms, (the ones that had not died earlier, that is).

In the 1980s, the municipality of Lisbon would commission António Lagoa Henriques to create a statue in his memory. This sculpture was unveiled in 1988 in front of A Brasileira, a café in Chiado, Lisbon, a cultural hub where the poet and other now illustrious personalities of Portuguese literature and art (Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiros and Santa-Rita Pintor) would meet and where they created Orpheu, a short run magazine that nonetheless still had a strong, lasting impact in Portuguese literature, marked by the first strokes of modernism in the literary scene.
This statue was created without a pedestal, and consists of a table and two chairs: one where the poet sits and one for you, the viewer turned participant. Today, tourists will take photos posing with the statue and share them on social media or print them as souvenirs.
About_project.txt
A fictitious heteronym born from this project in João Henrique Viegas’s mind commissioned the artist to produce an object that would mobilise the poet’s image and discredit the imposing representation of the man cast in bronze.

This project serves to counteract the fixed representation of the authors (Pessoa and his mind’s co-inhabitants) by creating mobile, virtual versions of the statue and multiplying and transporting them away from the original statue.

This project consists of a number of photographic and augmented reality experiences that serve to multiply the statue and unroot it from the place it stands in now. The copies the viewer sees when experiencing the works are lesser though: They are not the real thing. They are not in Portugal, in the café, and Pessoa is not there. And he is not in the bronze in Lisbon either.

Nevertheless, the artist hopes you enjoy these experiences for what they are. Little slices of his home, souvenirs he brought here for you to enjoy, that channel the cherished memories and thoughts the poet created, but simultaneously criticize the appropriation and commodification of his image to construct and sell Portuguese culture and identity.
Statue.jpg
Graduation_Show_2022_KABK.jpg
statue.obj
posters.map
Poster_english.jpg
Selfie_with_Statue.jpg
Intervention_tool.kit
Fernando.mask