WORKS . 2016

Forget me Not

This is not just an exhibition. It is a project that attempts to alert our conscience regarding the loss of cultural identity.
It is divided into 3 sections. In the first group - the passage of time - are the large paintings where the form and the color are essential to reveal hours, days and nights. The second group, with digital impressions of places and paths of the artist's wandering showing us places which we can imagine or even recognize.

The folded canvas, which was necessary for the transport of material for painting, connects us to artists of the 19th century - English naturalists who painted outside and also French impressionists - when art was meant to praise the sacred and to lead to the future, rather then an ephemeral present - and even brings to mind Land Art artists of the 20th century. The third group - portraits - was part of a project - FORGET ME NOT - which the artist began in Norway when she was artist-in-residence in July 2015 in a small island called Sula in the Sor Tondelag. She established personal contacts with the local fishing population, and the drawings are a record of that experience.

The message of Patricia Heredia is the restoration of connections which is so important in this period of cultural and psychological change. Her preoccupation is the exit of populations from their traditional places, abandoning their cultural patrimony. Within a few years, if the social and cultural policies do not change, and the paradigm of a better life in the large cities is not corrected; there will be many regions completely deserted and forgotten - losing for future generations cultural values; and so will be lost the collective memory of small communities which contributed to the culture of a country.

Isabel Vaz Lopes
VIEW GALLERY