“O SECRETO PODER DA ÁGUA DE MIL ÁGUAS”

Drawing from Archimedes and his Principle, António Mega Ferreira wrote “the secret power of the water of a thousand waters,” which gives its title to the curatorial proposal we are presenting at ARCOlisboa 2025.

To this phenomenon that lifts hot air balloons or sustains bodies in water, we may add the sheets of paper that Rui Soares Costa places in the Tagus River, and those by Rita Gaspar Vieira which, in liquid state, are poured onto the ground where sewer covers are found. Both processes, although in opposite directions, undoing/making, or perhaps not as opposed as they might seem, address, on the one hand, the formal question of paper and water, sustainability, and the use of resources; and, on the other hand, how the becoming of water, and consequently of time, is recorded on this support. Drawings made with water that use the ground or the river as repositories of memory and as supports for the creative process.