Biennial? “Important institution outside the dominant circuits”

“ ANDla [a Biac] is proof that it is possible, outside the dominant circuits of the territory, to maintain such an important and memorable institution. The Biennial is a reason we have confidence, which is one of the words we have to reinvent in our language. The Biennial, like other works that remain in our history, was done with work, insistence. Also with passion, dedication and creativity ", said António José Seguro, in a speech in the Chamber of Vila Nova de Cerveira, in the district of Viana do Castelo, before visiting the 24th edition of the International Art Biennale, which takes place until the end of December.

For Insurance, the Biennale is “a construction left by women and men who believe that art can leave a word, a dust, an image, a breath of beauty and questioning in Vila Nova de Cerveira, which is already by itself a mirror of beauty next to one of the most beautiful rivers we have to protect and continue to love”.

The PR also observed that “maybe the role of art is also to identify the languages of the future”.

“ Not because the world of political decision has an obligation to follow its steps, but because it has an obligation to identify the signs that art carries in its paths and that can alert us to the problems of the future ", he stressed.

The theme of BIAC – “Territory without Border” is “filled with problems”, he said.

“ In particular for me, who always preferred paths to borders. This is not a pessimistic message, although we often confuse pessimism with the simple approach to problems, the present and the future”, he continued.

“ One of the advantages of the existence of the word border is that we can discuss it and problematize it, not only as a political and geographical reality or as an accident of history, but also as a negotiation with time and its passage ", defended the PR.

“We talk abundantly about borders that separate two worlds. But in a century that makes virtual its emblem and its obsession, perhaps it does not make as much sense as nine centuries ago, when Portugal began to form and draw its borders, or as a century ago, or as 40 years ago, when Europe’s borders became a drawing on paper, a risk on the map, a river crossed by a bridge,” he maintained.

The head of state noted that the border between Minho and Galicia “has ceased to be physical and has become mental” in order, in time, to cease to be mental and become “a reminder to the texts of history, to the novels and to the political agreements between neighboring peoples”.

“ This idyllic vision, or just cultural, is a blessing for humanity that, over the past 70 years, has had in Europe, above all, stable borders based on the desire for common prosperity, sharing of identities, dialogue between memories and experiences”, he said.

That is why he stressed, “that the European Constitution is a precious building for humanity in the turning of the century”.

“ We have then ignored the fact that the conflicts of this first quarter of the new century would force us to redraw borders, to mention them and, more than that, to accentuate them. Current wars cross borders and build borders. As in other times of human history, they take the borders and turn them into walls, into pits, into abysses that we thought had been illuminated ", lamented.

Worse than that, “these conflicts do not occur only in distant geographies, burning the order of human things, but burn at the limits of Europe itself, as we know, by the war of Ukraine”.