Leonor Antunes: seam, a surface, a hinge, or a knot

Engaging the histories of art, architecture, and design, Leonor Antunes reflects on the functions of everyday objects, contemplating their potential to be materialized as abstract sculptures. She investigates the values and ideas embedded in things as well as in vernacular traditions and craft. Over the last two years, the artist has researched postwar figures active in Venice, Milan, and Turin who had a predominant role in postwar reconstruction as well as how craftsmanship traditions, associated with particular forms of knowledge and making, intersect with this history. Accompanying Antunes’s exhibition in the Portuguese Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, ‘a seam, a surface, a hinge, or a knot’ features texts by Briony Fer, Suzanne Cotter, Ana Teixeira Pinto, and curator João Ribas, as well as an artist’s project of approximately twenty die-cut sheets based on drawings in the archive of Egle Trincanato, an architect, writer, photographer, and curator who worked in Venice.

Portuguese Official Representation, 58th Biennale di Venezia