Flash Art uses cookies strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the website, for its legitimate interest to enhance your online experience and to enable or facilitate communication by electronic means. To learn more about cookies please see Terms & conditions

Flash Art
Flash Art
Shop
  • Home
    • CURRENT ISSUE
  • Features
    • Conversations
    • Reviews
    • Report
    • On View
    • FLASH FEED
    • Audacious Advice
    • Dance Office
    • Listening In
    • The Uncanny Valley
    • Flashback
    • (In)Visible Hands
    • PARADIGME
  • STUDIOS
    • Dune
    • Flash Art Mono
  • Archive
    • DIGITAL EDITION
    • Shop
    • Subscription
    • INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIPTION
    • Contact
→
Flash Art

#328 Nov 2019–Jan 2020, Reviews

9 December 2019, 4:00 pm CET

Nora Turato Serralves Museum / Porto by Pedro Alfacinha

by Pedro Alfacinha December 9, 2019
1
2
3
Nora Turato, Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about, 2019. Installation view at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, 2019. Photography by Filipe Braga. Courtesy of Serralves Foundation, Porto.
1
2
3
Nora Turato, Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about, 2019. Installation view at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, 2019. Photography by Filipe Braga. Courtesy of Serralves Foundation, Porto.
1
2
3
Nora Turato, Someone ought to tell you what it’s really all about, 2019. Installation view at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, 2019. Photography by Filipe Braga. Courtesy of Serralves Foundation, Porto.

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.

Share this article
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
More stories by

Pedro Alfacinha

Some Days, Some Days

20 September 2023, 9:00 am CET

Dearest Carol, I hope this finds you very well today. It’s a Thursday, and although I got up very early…

Read More

Mire Lee “Black Sun” New Museum / New York

14 September 2023, 9:00 am CET

My lone star is dead — and my bespangled lute / Bears the black sun of Melancholia. — Gérard de…

Read More

We, the Brand Evangelists of POSTPOSTPOST

13 September 2023, 9:00 am CET

On April 2, 2022, Madonna posted a TikTok. In it, she rightfully stars, clad in a black mesh top with…

Read More

Martin Wong “Malicious Mischief” Camden Art Centre / London

12 September 2023, 9:00 am CET

In a poem from the 1970s, Martin Wong, in his angled scrawl, urges a “poisoned garden,” a “temple of dawn,”…

Read More

  • Next

    Nayland Blake Institute of Contemporary Art / Los Angeles

  • Previous

    Jimmy Robert: Reworking Performativity

© 2023 Flash Art

  • Terms & conditions
  • Contact
  • Work with Us