The privilege of being able to do it freely

Three and a half meters by two – they are large, the canvases painted in oil by Joana Villaverde, for the exhibition My pleasure, on view at Pavilhão Branco of Galerias Municipais from October 31st until February 9, 2025. Just one work, a little smaller, is not completely abstract. Vigia represents the view from the artist’s studio, located in the Monastery of São Bento, in Avis, a space provided by the City Council and where Joana founded, in 2018, her Officina Mundi, a place with doors always open. It was there that she created all the pieces she now shows in Lisbon and just by being there this exhibition was born, in which she presents, for the first time, works without any figurative or iconographic expression. “It’s because I had this space and this time that I made these paintings. There is a path that I could never have taken if I hadn’t been in Avis, in this space and in this time. Artistically, I reached a place I didn’t even know was possible,” she says. That’s why she calls My pleasure “a portrait of the privilege of being able to do things in freedom”.

In the paintings she reflects the feeling of plenitude and infinity that comes from being able to work in such a studio, but also a desire to share and relate to the world around her, through brushstrokes made of broad and strong gestures. “As they are abstract, I was free to move in front of those canvases, it was a very important physical movement. I’m small and the canvas are very big, so I really had to use physical strength. It was like a dance or a sport”, she says. “In this process of making, I glimpse infinity. For me a new world.(…) It is the enormous ambition to fill the void with silence”, she writes on the handout sheet.

Reflections of everyday life

Looking out the studio window, she began painting skies and notes of earth at the bottom of the canvas. However, the reality of the world imposed itself and Joana Villaverde, outraged by the attacks in Gaza, ended up covering a canvas in red. “When I finished I was really grumpy. I think it was what I needed to paint, it was what I had to do in light of the ongoing massacre in Palestine, a place I have already visited three times and to which I feel very connected.” She simply called it Red.

Being in Avis, she says, ultimately brings her a greater awareness of the world around her. Far from feeling isolated, she finds that she has more time to listen and pay attention to what is happening. This is also why she created Officina Mundi and opens it to other artists and the population, organizing residencies, exhibitions and meetings frequently. “Sharing this place is essential, because it is too beautiful for just me to enjoy. I am aware of how important it would be for us all to have this right. It doesn’t belong to me, it’s public and that’s how it should be.” For the artist, it all comes down to one idea: “Being together, open, honestly and giving the best we have to each other”.

At the same time and thinking about what led her to paint Red, Joana Villaverde writes on the exhibition sheet: My pleasure turns out to be “the contradiction between freedom and asphyxiation, my freedom and the collapse of humanity”. They are perhaps reflections of her daily life, an expression she uses in this text, and works that she describes as “vertical skies” with the colors she experimented and mixed on the canvas. In one of the other paintings, horizontal, she confesses that she indulged in tones that she previously rejected: purple and lilac. She called it A cena dos violinos (The Violin Scene) because it was also an instrument she didn’t like for many years… until she was willing to listen more carefully. “I’m more calm now,” she admits.

My pleasure is curated by António Pinto Ribeiro. With free entry, it can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 am to 1 pm and from 2 pm to 6 pm. Joana Villaverde welcomes you: “It was a pleasure, please come in.”