“And when I create an environment called voglio vedere le mie montagne (I want to see my mountains) I mean an inner archetype of the idea of mountain: the mountains of the self.”
Joseph Beuys, 1979

In the year of the centenary of the birth of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), BoCA creates the project “A Defesa da Natureza” (“Defense of Nature”), a collaboration aimed at promoting new artistic creations.
Curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes, “Quero ver as minhas montanhas” (“I want to see my mountains”) counts on the participation of the artists Sara Bichão, Diana Policarpo, Dayana Lucas, Gustavo Sumpta, Gustavo Ciríaco, Musa paradisiaca and Berru.
The premise invites artists to look at Beuys’s legacy while observing their own mountains, their own ‘selves’.
With diverse backgrounds and artistic genres from plastic to the performing arts, each artist is invited to conceive a single intervention to be held by the sea, the river or in a green space, nurturing affinities between art and nature.
Seven unique sessions for every Sunday of the programme, set between Lisbon, Almada and Faro.


Gustavo Ciríaco – “Carousel”

“Voglio vedere le mie montagne”, the phrase which names the work of Joseph Beuys, expresses the desire of a landscape painter on his deathbed to see again the mountains that shaped his relationship with the world.

Millenary milestones of a time that runs without stopping, the mountains, however, see their eternity threatened by contemporary human practices of exploration in search of the minerals of their composition. One of the techniques that has gained prominence in the last 50 years is characterized by the removal, via explosion, of mountain tops and their razing for economic benefit. Constituted by processes that lasted millions of years, these iconic figures of relief disappear to become raw material for weapons, buildings, cities, part of an insane destruction.

“Carousel” brings in flight mountains that have disappeared, consumed by the hunger for their minerals. In a whirl, they reach their last zenith.