My Mezinha para a Inquietação installation is a part of a larger series of paintings that research the intersections of identity, belief and body. Here are gathered the Paintings Corpo de Pedra (body of Stone) and Entre Narizes de Santos (In Between saints noses) as well as a few other small paintings that did not make it into the final installation.
The painting Corpo de Pedra was the result of my fascination with Portuguese folklore and home remedies as ways of finding relief, comfort and defining one’s identity. In Santa Cruz, Almodôvar, there is an abandoned church and next to this church there is a small chapel with our Lady of Lapa. Next to this chapel there is a rock partially painted in white that is said by the elderly to have the ability to miraculously cure headaches if a certain ritual is performed.
The ritual consists of doing 9 turns around the chapel praying followed by hitting your head on the rock 9 times. The rock is supposedly the shape of a head due to the amount of people who banged their head on it. The mental image of a body of stone being sculpted by other people’s pain led me to this final image. This painting is a metaphor for frustration towards a certain fatalism that is present in Portuguese folklore, a body of stone, passive, sculpted by other people’s frustration.
The Entre Narizes de santos painting is a reference to the Portuguese saying, “Isso não é nenhum nariz de santo” (that’s not any saint’s nose), this saying is used when someone wants to say that something is not as complicated as it seems. This saying is meant to reference the difficulty in painting a religious figure, specifically its nose.
The final image is meant to be a representation of my own complicated feelings towards Portugal and its often confining catholic background. It is meant to be seen as an allegory for a feeling of displacement, incompleteness and alienation.
mariana murta 