Drawings 2015
Parallel Worlds Series
The actual world is just one of many possible worlds. It is not a fact that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds. Other real, concrete, autonomous worlds exist, but are distinguished from the actual world simply by standing in no special, temporal or causal relation with the actual world: we don’t exist in these other possible worlds yet. Paes Leão directs the human abilities of invention and imagination towards bridging the gap between the actual world and the incomplete, projected, desired possible world in order to create an authentic space. Daniela Paes Leão felt the urgency to visualise these possible worlds through a series of drawings to help make them more concrete, and by doing so, more tangible and attainable for the viewer.
Different series of drawings each relate to a specific basic need such as food or housing and proposes a way for people to take matters into their own hands through civil disobedience and social uprisings. The drawings are all situated in cities and oftentimes the basic need that the drawings deal with is not represented in the drawing itself. The drawings are also deliberately incomplete and leave a large part of the paper untouched, inviting the viewer to take an active role and to use their imagination and creativity to complete the possible world projected by the drawing. Although the drawings accurately represent streets in Lisbon, due to the diminutive information they could be set in any European city.
To reach a larger audience than one unique drawing could, the artist also created enlarged copies of relevant fragments of the drawings and pasted them on buildings in Lisbon, recreating the scene in the drawing using both the two-dimensional drawing itself and the actual, three-dimensional built environment.
Parallel World Series # 1: Planting Public Space
These drawings were installed in Lisbon’s Graça neighborhood, opposite the former Monte garden—a community-run vegetable garden cultivated for years on an abandoned plot. In 2013, without consulting residents, Lisbon’s City Council demolished the garden and subdivided the land into smaller plots available for rent. Those who originally tended the garden cannot afford to rent the new plots.
Tragically, one in every three children in Lisbon faces hunger due to poverty.
MDF panel, inkjet print on 80g white paper, Nanquim ink text drawn on tracing paper, Nanquim ink drawings on bamboo paper / Size: 70x100 cm
Parallel World Series # 2: Occupying Neglected Houses
These drawings were glued on the entrance of a 12-store office building that has been sitting empty for years, on the Av. da República 18, one of the city’s largest and most central streets. In times of crises, when the banks foreclose so many people’s homes, sometimes forcing entire families to sleep on the street, favouring real estate speculation to compassion is immoral.
MDF panel, inkjet print on 80g white paper, Nanquim ink text drawn on tracing paper, Nanquim ink drawings on bamboo paper / Size: 70x100 cm | Street intervention: inkjet print on 80g white paper/ scale 1:1
Parallel World Series # 3: Boycotting a corrupt state
These drawings were pasted on the wall of the post office on Santa Justa street; one of the most central post offices in Lisbon, where many people go to pay their taxes. If a corrupt government declares the end of the welfare state and public services are either being privatised, sold for pennies on the dollar, or just disappear, why are we still paying taxes?
Nanquim ink drawings on bamboo paper / Size: 60x80 cm | Street intervention: inkjet print on 80g white paper/ scale 1:1