Dayana Lucas (b. Caracas, 1987; lives and works in Porto) develops practical research in the field of drawing, focusing on the transition to sculpture, using different materials such as concrete, wood and metal. She also works as a designer for cultural projects and has worked with musicians, visual artists and various Portuguese cultural institutions. She co-founded the Oficina Arara, where, until 2017, she worked in the field of design and printing, using various handcrafted media and organised exhibitions, workshops and meetings with Porto's artistic community. Since 2010, she has worked with the SOOPA collective and in 2019 created the ORINOCO project, dedicated to publishing books and other artist's publications.
Her solo exhibitions include "Um" (One) at the Wrong Weather Gallery (2018), “Manual Spirit” at the Serralves Museum (2018), "Pedra em Flor" (Blossoming Stone) at Sismógrafo (2019) and "Negro Secreto" (Secret Black) at the Lehmann + Silva Gallery (2019). In recent years she has also taken part in various group exhibition, at venues such as the CIAJG - José de Guimarães International Centre for the Arts (Guimarães, Portugal); Maia Contemporary Art Biennial (Maia, Portugal); PORTA33 (Funchal, Portugal) and Sesc Pompéia (São Paulo, Brazil).
(This residency happended in partnership with CIAJG and ended with an exhibition at this Center)
The ancients used the entrails of animals to communicate with the gods. The Latin term for this art of decipherment was "haruspice" - which means the inspection of entrails or the revelation of that which is not immediately apparent. The modern perception of our existence is based on reality as an abyss, labyrinth or fold - that which Drummond de Andrade called the "clear enigma" of language. Between opacity and transparency, between the visible and the invisible, exploring the nuances of a path that has two extremes, Dayana Lucas (born in 1987 in Caracas; lives and works in Porto) elevates the act of inscribing, graphing, drawing to ritual. There is an initiatory dimension to her gesture, in which drawing is like a machine for seeing and feeling. The invention of a never-ending line, in Dayana Lucas’ work, explores not only the closure of the gesture, but also its beginnings, since the imagination gives shape to a thread that is constantly starting over, without either beginning or end - an ideal suspension of death. Faced with the current impoverishment of language, signs and flat, algorithmisable messages, this exhibition highlights the desire to retreat from that which has already been said. We could even say that it seeks to surrealise things. The heart of the exhibition is the glass house, an (in)decipherable nodal point that harbours enigma. Synonymous with protection and delicacy at the same time, the glass house can mean being naked within ourselves. It is where the artist makes her fragility (and her strength) visible. The group of works and interventions on display at the CIAJG highlight the artist’s transition from drawing to three-dimensional form, and how she has been influenced by music and solitary landscapes. Visitors to this exhibition can thereby sense the transformation of drawing into sculpture, into a transparent house, without any mediation. We are the house. We have no glass ceilings.
