DOMÉSTICO, by Estúdio Imigrante
5th Nov — 7th Dec 2022

“We are architects making cinema. As architects, we collect impressions, images, and stories. As if they were houses or cities.”

I have known the work of Estúdio Imigrante almost since the beginning. I remember very clearly the first films I watched. I remember getting the impression that something new was under construction. It is essential for classifying the studio work, the understanding that we are in the presence of an object with a new identity. The interdisciplinary intersection is the fundamental basis of their artistic practice, building an extension of architecture to cinema and visual arts. Gustavo Imigrante, founder and director of the studio, believes that experimentation, and mixing of knowledge, processes, and techniques, enhances the possibility of “an encounter with the new”. This novelty works as a motto for reflection and construction of a new level of experimentation, be it in cinema, architecture, photography, or above all, in artistic thought in general.

The exhibition took its title from the project developed in the last two years by the studio. Doméstico is a visual essay developed as a script for a film, where the artist-director, through video, photography, and other cinematographic resources, works on three different works by three Portuguese architecture studios. For Plato, Estúdio Imigrante conceived the exhibition space as a stage/laboratory for experimenting with its images, in the way in which the installation of photographs and video interact with each other and enhance the reading and interpretation of the project narratives. Doméstico works as a triptych, which casts different perspectives on three single-family houses. Here, architecture and performance live in constant tension.

In the first moment, a film entitled “Sometimes my head gets ahead of me” is shown along with a mosaic of 20 photographs depicting scenes from the film. We are witnessing a performative game of everyday life, routine, and tasks, the self-indulgent morning protocol of everyday life. In the photographic mosaic, the space of human presence is undressed, and twenty fragments of the house after its use. (The GreenHouse by Ottotto Architecture)

In “To build a postmodern sacrifice”, a couple informs their teenage daughter that she is no longer needed by the family. In conversation with her father, the young woman is encouraged to look for new options for the future. Two images from this moment portray the architectural project. It is questioned how much the values ​​and family dynamics are transformed by the economic matrices and the productivity patterns of society. (090 by Fala Atelier)

The last moment, which closes the triptych, is “We were this close”, a film and two object-images. In these pieces, contemporary life in a modern house is staged, a type of architecture that tends to propose a space of conviviality and familiarity for its inhabitants, though it is invariably conditioned by the use of gadgets and devices that are part of the day-to-day. (House Santo Tirso by Nuno Brandão Costa)

Domestic reconfigures the architecture of the house, understanding it as a stage, a space for experimentation and reflection of everyday life. Its own domestic and performative character is subject to analysis. The concepts of routine, productivity, alienation, and identity constitute a very poignant metaphor for the present.