Irineu Destourelles ‘Autoestrangeirismo’

Solo exhibition by Irineu Destourelles, from 21 May until 8 June.

In Autoestrangeirismo Irineu Destourelles presents a series of video works, drawings and paintings that have as a starting point the interpretation of the film Chaimite (1953, Dir. Jorge Brum do Canto) as a discourse of self-love for the nation that, for the materialization of this feeling, requires a hate figure. The backdrop of Chaimite is the ‘pacification’ military campaigns in southern Mozambique led by the Portuguese army in 1895 against native king Ngungunhane’s army. He is eventually captured by the forces of Major Mouzinho Albuquerque, who becomes an overnight national hero and a colonial hero across Europe. When the film premièred in Lisbon it was acclaimed as truthful to the Estado Novo regime’s spirit, and between the 50s and 70s, during the dictatorial regime, was one of the Portuguese films with the highest number of screenings on the Portuguese National Television. The interpretation of Chaimite, considering its Enlightenment based discourses, leads Destourelles to explore relations between what is explicit and implicit.

Irineu Destourelles (1974) was born in the Island of Santo Antão in Cape Verde. BA Visual Arts, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam; MA Visual Arts, Central Saint Martins College, London. Lives and works between London and Lisbon. Recent exhibitions include: Thinking According to Rectangular Images, Portuguese Cultural Centre at Mindelo (solo show, Mindelo, 2011), Escena Caboverdiana, Casa Africa (collective, Las Palmas, 2013) and Southern Panoramas, Associação Cultural Videobrazil (collective, São Paulo, 2013). This is his first exhibition in Lisbon.