The Sintra City Council presents the exhibition “Poderia vê-lo a trabalhar o dia todo” (I Could Watch Him Work All Day) by Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira at MU.SA – Sintra Arts Museum, available to see for free from May 16 to July 20.

Curated by Victor dos Reis, the exhibition is premised on the encounter between a young painter studying in London who works as a model for other painters. Ten years later, at an exhibition of his own work, he meets again one of the artists he had posed for. This artist only then finds out that his model was also a painter. In that meeting, the younger artist offers to pose again on the condition that he be accompanied by three cameras that would allow him to record the sessions from his point of view, materialize images he had thought of during his hours working as a model, and thus obtain material for one of his future works. Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira and Diccon Swan explore this ambiguous and sometimes contradictory condition in which each person is simultaneously a model (the one who is observed and represented) and an author (the one who observes and represents) – that is, the one who shows. The current exhibition stems from this project, in which, through thick paint-objects conceived from the images obtained then, Rui Miguel Leitão Ferreira performs an unexpected subversion of the classic power relations between artist and model, by making the latter (who usually passively offers himself to the artist’s scrutinizing gaze) an active participant in the creative process.

Find out more about MU.SA HERE.