SUBSTRATO #4 | Nádia Duvall | «Le Boeuf Écorché»
3 Julho a 20 Julho
SUBSTRATO #4
Nádia Duvall | Le Boeuf Écorché
Nádia Duvall | Le Boeuf Écorché
OPEN | July 3 – July 20, 2025
HOURS | Wed-Sun, 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM
GUIDED TOUR WITH LGP INTERPRETER | July 19 at 6:00 PM
CHILDREN'S WORKSHOP | July 12 at 10:30 AM
SUPPORT | República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes
Inspired by Rembrandt's eponymous painting (1655) and Francis Bacon's dismembered body, Nádia Duvall's Le Boeuf Écorché ("The Flayed Ox") is a visceral sculpture and self-portrait, also extending the thought of Artaud and Bataille — from flesh as radical matter, to eroticism as contact with limit and sublimity. The work stems from the artist's intimate memory of a painful childhood separation from her sick mother in a foreign land, laden with fear of the unknown.
A mattress being opened is the starting point for an "alchemical" ritual, described by one of the artist's heteronyms: Louise, the witch-vigilante. Disemboweled, emptied, cured for years, it is refilled with randomly arranged "organs" — for, as Artaud says, "the order of the organs doesn't matter."
A sculptural anus gleams in electric blue like Bataille's "solar anus": a point of excretion and revelation, where the erotic merges with the cosmic. Just as Artaud argued that art should "smell bad," this work does not shy away from the grotesque — but transforms it into pulsation. «Le Boeuf Écorché» is thus a transmuted and transmuting body-without-organs; a body that is also a house, an altar, a memory in combustion. A process-work, in constant material and symbolic metamorphosis over the years, reconfiguring traumatic pain into relic, excrement, and light.
The sculptural piece is integrated into an installation composed of two other elements: a projected text – a self-referential programmatic manifesto to the sculpture's own creation-transformation process – and a sound work – which brings the carcass itself to life through unsettling sounds and murmurs.
HOURS | Wed-Sun, 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM
GUIDED TOUR WITH LGP INTERPRETER | July 19 at 6:00 PM
CHILDREN'S WORKSHOP | July 12 at 10:30 AM
SUPPORT | República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes
Inspired by Rembrandt's eponymous painting (1655) and Francis Bacon's dismembered body, Nádia Duvall's Le Boeuf Écorché ("The Flayed Ox") is a visceral sculpture and self-portrait, also extending the thought of Artaud and Bataille — from flesh as radical matter, to eroticism as contact with limit and sublimity. The work stems from the artist's intimate memory of a painful childhood separation from her sick mother in a foreign land, laden with fear of the unknown.
A mattress being opened is the starting point for an "alchemical" ritual, described by one of the artist's heteronyms: Louise, the witch-vigilante. Disemboweled, emptied, cured for years, it is refilled with randomly arranged "organs" — for, as Artaud says, "the order of the organs doesn't matter."
A sculptural anus gleams in electric blue like Bataille's "solar anus": a point of excretion and revelation, where the erotic merges with the cosmic. Just as Artaud argued that art should "smell bad," this work does not shy away from the grotesque — but transforms it into pulsation. «Le Boeuf Écorché» is thus a transmuted and transmuting body-without-organs; a body that is also a house, an altar, a memory in combustion. A process-work, in constant material and symbolic metamorphosis over the years, reconfiguring traumatic pain into relic, excrement, and light.
The sculptural piece is integrated into an installation composed of two other elements: a projected text – a self-referential programmatic manifesto to the sculpture's own creation-transformation process – and a sound work – which brings the carcass itself to life through unsettling sounds and murmurs.
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Nádia Duvall's Le Boeuf Écorché is the fourth episode of SUBSTRATO, a new cycle of exhibitions at Zaratan that aims to stimulate artistic productions specifically designed for a specific space within Zaratan, namely the micro-amphitheater located in the gallery's black box. This concave structure becomes the central axis of the project. The approximation with the space, the environment, and the architecture is an essential element of the works presented, which we can properly define as site-specific.
BIOGRAPHY: NÁDIA DUVALL (1986, Spain) of Portuguese nationality, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work reflects multiple autobiographical, social, and political issues with profound philosophical reflections through multiple media such as sculpture, drawing, painting, video, performance, literature, and cinema. Duvall holds a PhD in Fine Arts (2024) with the highest classification of Summa Cum Laude (Distinction and Praise) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Throughout her training, she has completed multiple technological specializations ranging from cinema to visual arts. She is currently awaiting the results of her Post-Doctorate through FCT and at FBAUL based on the feature film projects "Dear Oni" and "Sweet & Sour Flavour" and the feminist magazine "Gorilla Army". Duvall has won multiple awards such as the BANIF PAINTING Revelation Prize in 2008; the Art, Science and Technology Prize from DG Artes in partnership with Ciência Viva; the Young Creators Prize/scholarship from the National Culture Center of Portugal in 2016, and the Young European Creation Prize from the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum in partnership with the JCE Biennale in 2019; a prestigious FCT scholarship for her Doctorate (2019-2023) and Merit in the Luxemburg Art Prize for several consecutive years. Duvall has several published books and participates in international Conferences. She is currently represented by Galeria FOCO and her work is present in several private collections. Her first medium-length film "GREEN SCREAM" (42”) was nominated for several international festivals and has already been awarded Best Experimental Film at the WSXA Barcelona Film Festival (2024) and two Honorable Mentions: at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival (2024) and at the WSXA & ARFF International Film Festival. She lives in Lisbon, with a studio in Barcarena.