Through “Os Rapazes da Praia Adoro,” the audience is invited to revisit the artistic processes of Alberto Cortés & João Gabriel, who, following a joint invitation from BoCA and Teatro do Bairro Alto, and during the 5th edition of the biennial, presented us with a beach where desire, memory, and fiction intertwine, bringing together geographies, languages, and bodies.
After inviting Alberto Cortés and João Gabriel, the first and most fundamental question that arose was how these two artists—working in the performing and visual arts—could find a common ground for expression. That space quickly took on a name and a geography, giving rise to “Os Rapazes da Praia Adoro,” an imagined beach between Lisbon and Madrid, where desire, memory, and fiction converge to bring geographies, languages, and bodies face to face.
In these images, which recount their residency leading up to the premiere of the show in Madrid and Lisbon, we witness the portrait of an encounter between a Portuguese man and a Spaniard who draw closer in a suspended space, equidistant from both countries, as if the beach could be at once a border and a shelter—or even a crossing. Between eroticism and vulnerability, we find the queer universe of Alberto & João unfolded in a work where a place inscribes personal stories, political tensions, and the possibility of a community yet to come.
