Andreia Santana relies on an idea of search and observation that questions the perception of time and the logic of objects, often associated with an archaeological reference.
The artist's work for the Walk&Talk festival comes from research conducted at the Angra do Heroísmo Underwater Archaeological Park, in direct contact with its archaeologists and divers, where she researched the use and production of new systems and new work tools.
The artist occupies an abandoned swimming pool, raised in relation to sea level, which appears as an empty hole. In this scenario, which curiously resembles an excavation site, there is a set of metallic sculptures that appear to emerge from the surface. The walls are covered by a layer of white paint and the floor is covered by a material that mimics Terrazo technique, used in fieldwork, which unifies the findings that have been inscribed in the soil over time.
The connection that is created between the insular/Atlantic context and the deactivated pool is based on the presence of water and on the act of digging, which are inverted here. In fact, when referring to the universe of subaquatic archaeology, in an empty and discovered construction, the artist problematizes the memory and the place of its emergence.
Andreia Santana also intervenes in two rooms adjacent to the swimming pool where she applies a succession of posters that occupy all the existing walls. Likewise, these posters are articulated in an overlay of layers and present images of the aquatic world. One of the rooms receives a slide projection which is read as one more layer added to the existing ones.
All images come from the initial phase of the project and are transposed from their place of origin (underwater parks) to the exhibition space, where the relationship between the excavation object and the excavated object is staged.
The idea of stratum is tested vertically, with gravity, on the pool floor and horizontally, with the overlapping of images, on the walls of the adjoining rooms. Therefore, what we find is a set of fragments that by matter and image personify a memory and establish nets of affectivity. Something that holds the potential for a collection and completeness, intentionally impossible to achieve.
The intervention problematizes the hypothesis of a continuous presence, in successive recycling, that questions the idea of memory, authenticity, authorship and appropriation, establishing a new existence that interrupts chronological succession and linear time.