Between 5 April and 5 June 2021, Galeria Zé dos Bois presents a solo exhibition by Fala Mariam that brings together a set of works made between the late 1980s and the present day.
As the title indicates, Fala Mariam makes “Pintura-Pintura”, a painting that becomes concrete in itself. This is how the critic and art historian José Augusto França described her work, for whom her work “(…) painting by painting – or poem by poem, explains itself, by it, and not from outside, it is explained, in the appropriate grammar, which is that of poetry”.
Her production, a remnant of another time, alluding to Portuguese modernism and the symbolist movement, traced her individual path through a worked continuity and the creation of her own thought and language. This calls for reading and understanding that, although it is not given to us instinctively, allows us to discover the various layers of meaning put on canvas.
Fala Mariam has exhibited regularly, individually and collectively since 1986, the year in which she was awarded a scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, bringing us now an exhibition that allows us to glimpse some moments of her career, as well as her most recent creation, never before exhibited.