MaisMenos - Abril Mágoas Mil AP

This xylograph is a very special edition as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, made with CPS - Portuguese Center of Serigraphy.

It is part of and edition of 50 copies: one for each year of the revolution. For every copy one carnation was used and its leaves stamped in the paper, wich makes every copy single and different from all the others. It was made without paint, just emboss, in 290gr Fabriano Tiepolo paper.

The xylograph is in excellent conditions and will be send with a certificate from the artist inside a hard card tube.

THE ENGRAVING IN THE MAIN PHOTO IS COPY 1/50 (THIS IS NOT THE COPY FOR SALE)
THE COPY FOR SALE IS ON THE SECOND PHOTO (AP 9/10)

This year we celebrate five decades of the Carnation Revolution. Fifty years later, there is still a lot of April to fulfill for a large part of the population, such as the right to decent housing, quality healthcare, and work with a decent salary. The achievements of the Revolution feel increasingly distant and are celebrated with the presence of far-right forces in the Assembly of the Republic, with as many deputies as there are years of Freedom from the dictatorship.

On the eve of April 25, 2024, the artist Miguel Januário went to Largo do Carmo - the most symbolic place of the Revolution - and placed, without authorization, a marble plaque on the facade of the Quartel do Carmo, which read “ Abril Mágoas Mil, 1974-2024”, conveying a mix of celebrations and tribute, of desolation and hope, of beginning and end.

As we have become accustomed to his MaisMenos intervention project, not only does it leave us with the duality of interpretations, it also again, in a sharp way, puts its finger on a seemingly unavoidable wound.


Development:

After a few days observing 'Quartel do Carmo', on one side to understand the movements of the guards, on the other to understand the support where the plaque would be placed, the artist went with the piece to Carmo on the Saturday before the 25th of April, on April 20th during the morning. After some waiting, because there were many guards always coming and going and also because many groups of tourists were passing by (that ended up helping to camouflage the action), Miguel Januário, together with two people filming the intervention, went straight to the main door of the 'Quartel' and, without the guards noticing, glued the marble plaque with the carnations to the facade of the building. After about 1 minute, one of the guards comes out and sees the sign and stops the artist, as well as one of the people who was filming that had to delete the filming (the other one wasn't seen and this is why a video and photos exist). Miguel Januário was identified and the plaque was removed from the wall and kept inside the barracks. The officer responsible for the day was called and a conversation ensued about the purpose of the intervention. The artist explained his motivations and was questioned about doing something without authorization in an Army building, to which he replied that it was part of his artistic process. Miguel Januário proposed offering the plaque to the Guard and the Carmo Museum that exists within the barracks, but to do so he had to write to the Guard Command explaining the action and the respective offer. The command responded simply by saying that the retained plaque could be lifted by the artist, which ended up happening on April 24th by a person close to the artist. On that day, when this person went to the Barracks to lift the piece, a ceremony was taking place to pay homage to the 50th anniversary of the Revolution and, coincidentally, the President of the Republic was about to inaugurate a commemorative plaque in the exactly same place where the piece was previously placed.


As a matter of curiosity:

-the Guard kept the plaque until it was lifted, still with the carnations in their respective cups.

-the plate was glued on with a lot of double-sided tape, which made it difficult for the guard on duty on the 24th to remove it from the table where it had been placed.

-the artist published the video of the action that same morning and some of the guards mentioned to the person who carried out the pick up that they had already watched it through the maismenos project's Instagram (see link https://www.instagram.com/p/ C6Iobvforle/?img_index=1).

-on the 20th, a few minutes after the action, another cerimony took place to homage Salgueiro Maia, with some April Captains, like Vasco Lourenço and Salgueiro Maias' wife. The artist sang Grândola with this group just after being released! The timing was perfect, since it would have been impossible to make the action when this was taking place, because this cerimony was observed by a large number of guards at the front of the 'Quartel do Carmo'.


Miguel Januário is a Portuguese artist born in 1981. He has a degree in Communication Design and is currently studying for a PhD in Design at FBAUP. He was a collaborator at the cultural intervention space Maus Hábitos and artistic director of Ivity Brand Corp. He is currently Head of Art for Sustainability at CEiiA. He is a member of the PCP. He is the author of '±MaisMenos±’, an intervention project that has become a national and international reference for urban art. He is represented by the Underdogs gallery in Lisbon. At the same time, he is the author of KissMyWalls, a project with a strong urban component related to graffiti, advertising, writing and intervention, which includes several artists – Caos, Mr. Death, Naif, among othors – each with its own visual identity and aesthetics. He has exhibited and/or worked with internationally renowned artists such as Vhils, Shepard Fairey (Obey), Futura, Felipe Pantone, Barry Mcgee, Swoon, AddFuel, Wasted Rita, Icy and Sot, Bordalo II, Mosaik, Ram, Gonçalo Mar, Nomen , among many others.
He has been producing thought-provoking, cutting-edge work both indoors and outdoors in a variety of media – from video to sculptural installations, from painting to performance. Besides numerous illegal public art interventions in several countries, the project has also been showcased in solo and group exhibitions in various institutional contexts, including at Vera Cortês Gallery (Lisbon, 2010), MACE–Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (Elvas, 2011, 2014), Underdogs Gallery (Lisbon, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2021), Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasilia, 2014), Museu do Côa (Vila Nova de Foz Côa, 2015), Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais (Bragança, 2015), MUDE–Museu do Design e da Moda (Lisbon, 2016), Museu José Malhoa (Caldas da Rainha, 2016), MACRO–Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Rome, 2016), Wunderkammern Gallery (Rome, 2017), Celaya Brothers Gallery (México City, 2018), Arco Lisboa (Lisbon, 2018), WTF Gallery (Bangkok, 2018), Interferências MAAT (Lisbon, 2022) and leading art festivals and events such as Walk&Talk Festival (São Miguel, Azores, 2011), Guimarães European Capital of Culture (Guimarães, 2012), La Tour Paris 13 (Paris, 2013), Wool Festival (2014), Esporo (Proença-a-Nova, 2022), Nuart Festival (Stavanger, 2014, 2017), TrashPlant Festival (Tenerife, 2018), Roskilde Festival (Roskilde, 2018), Forgotten Project (Rome, 2016), Iminente Festival (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022), Emergengy Iminente Festival (2020), Iminente Festival Rio de Janeiro (2019), Iminente Festival London (2017), Iminente Festival Marseille (2022), Alter Ego Macau (2018), Mulheres Saramaguianas with Centro Português de Serigrafia and Fundation José Saramago (2022), Esporo (2022), NEBFest Brussels (2022), Caceres Abierto (2023). ±MaisMenos± has also been the subject of two TED talks, at TEDxLuanda (Luanda, 2014) and TEDxPorto (Porto, 2015), and other public and academic lectures.