Carla Filipe must be among the most creative artists working in the world if her prodigious work exhibited at the Serralves is any indication. Some might call this pen and ink chicken scratch, but not me. Of the three exhibits I saw, this one was the most compelling.
Filipe's sweet spot, which she expresses in multiple media, seems to be the nexus among politics, pop culture and personal experience. No plastic shopping bags for her.
Her bilingualism is evident with many of her cartoon-like drawings, captioned in both Portuguese and English.
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| "I need a job I need love" (2005) |
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| "Atlas" (2005) |
I'm guessing some of her work is satirical. It reminds me of inexpensively produced agitprop that you might have found on a college campus in the 60s, although she wasn't born until 1973, near the end of Portugal's political dictatorship.
Filipe must have been politically precocious to revile Margaret Thatcher, whose nanny state coincided with her early adolescence. Did she misspell the right-wing prime minister's name wrong deliberately?
Our similarity in musical taste contributed to my appreciation of her relentlessly contemporary work.
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