Terra Livre (Free Land) is the exhibition by Diogo Simões (Miratejo, 1988) that can be seen at Galeria Zé dos Bois and is the result of a working process between the artist, Natxo Checa and António Júlio Duarte, curators. Focusing on a body of photographic work from approximately 2011 to 2020, the trio now presents us with a work that, while not destabilising the nature of the photographic image, nevertheless causes a stir in relation to the categories and framing of that image. For those who like to immerse themselves in this territory of hallucinations and deceptions, this is a feast.

With a well-established identity and an existence legitimised by the system, ZDB works to expand the territory of perceptions, nourishing the senses with stimuli that promote astonishment, growth, discomfort, power, and truth. While not necessarily a territory of counter-cultures, ZDB has never ceased to be a space of various forms of resistance, where we find programme-makers who are alert and it is in this context that this Terra Livre is now inserted.

This land that Diogo inhabits and where he moves, and which has stimulated the creation of these images, has had countless representations. We’re talking about the south bank of the River Tagus, in particular Almada, Caparica, Miratejo, Barreiro, Seixal, etc., and how this area, full of contrasts that preserve the dialogues between the rhythms of the countryside and those of urbanity, is often represented to us in politically committed images. What we mean by this is that the aesthetic dimension of the images taken in this area seems invariably subjugated to a historical dimension. Once this happens, the viewer will find it difficult to observe the seductive portrait of a black boy, veiled by a pall of smoke, a litre in his hand, without projecting onto that portrait images that populate continents and replace ideas. They look like images that are out there, but they’re not. To feel, you have to look again and again.