The long-term exhibition at the Soares dos Reis National Museum is the stage for a performance inspired by the Porto Sombrio (Somber Oporto) theme. It is on October 29th, at 4 pm. Free entry.
The initiative is produced by students on the Event Organization Technician course at the Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional do Porto, in partnership with the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo.
Throughout the different spaces of the Soares dos Reis National Museum, voices, bodies, sounds and poetry wander among the artworks that make up the museum’s vast collection. Visitors will be surprised by different forms of artistic expression.
The selection of poems chosen for this activity includes «Tristezas do Desterro», an exile poem by Alexandre Herculano that served as inspiration for António Soares dos Reis to produce the sculpture O Desterrado (The Exiled) (in the photo).
The object was the final test of the Sculpture course and was held in Rome, where Soares dos Reis stayed, at the Instituto de Santo António dos Portugueses, to complete his scholarship abroad.
The nostalgic emotion that the sculpture conveys is translated into marble by the nostalgic posture of the figure sitting on a rock beaten by the sea. In a broader sense, the work gives us back the image of a lonely and thoughtful man, which is closely linked to the idea of evasion in the romantic imagination.
Saudade (Missing), the desire to return to the Homeland, nostalgia for the motherland seem to form a dominant state of mind in the maritime experience of the Portuguese, a level in which O Desterrado (The Exiled) by Soares dos Reis assumes a superior dimension, of collective representation.