For her first solo exhibition in Portugal, Nora Turato drove her two greyhounds, Taco and Tuna, all the way from Amsterdam.
In the video titled Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about, shot this summer in an empty auditorium at the Serralves Museum and now being shown at the museum’s contemporary gallery, the two dogs are more than mere extras; rather, they lend both symbolism and familiarity to what would otherwise be an autonomous piece within the wider context of Turato’s work.
Usually operating a broad, intertwined system of outputs for her practice, which includes monumental murals, paintings, audio pieces, and powerful spoken-word performances — in which the full extent and detail of her work really comes to life — Turato’s process is an endless cadavre exquis between herself and the ever-expanding cacophony of overwhelming information that surrounds us all. But with her bold, loud, caffeine-driven ways, the artist appears to be thriving where most of us have surrendered, and has created a beautifully complex, poetic dominion of her own.
Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about employs a new strategy though — not only is the artist confined to a screen, but the screen itself is isolated in a dark and quiet room of the museum. It imposes a reinterpretation of the artist’s role as a performer, as the screen diffuses and flattens her image, and the audio system compresses the volume of her voice. We are no longer struck by the sheer power of her presence, nor is our attention spiked by the ephemeral; this is a performance, yes, but one you can watch in a loop.
Openly inspired by John Cassavetes’ Opening Night, in which the main character goes progressively rogue to the point that one can no longer decipher whether she is adhering to the script or not, Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about aims at “reclaiming the right for a an artist to make a mistake,” as if Turato, concerned with the speed at which her work is disseminated, decided to lock it into a continuous rehearsal, isolated by the stage and the screen, with only her two dogs as beacons of the real world.
