This project has as a background an installation for the annual event of Paratissima Lisboa, a public, collaborative, inclusive and democratic exhibition project of contemporary street art in the urban space destined to the promotion of emerging artists.
As the place for my installation was chosen a shop, that used to sell traditional liquors before, in a very busy pedestrian zone in Martim Moniz, the most multicultural neighborhood in Lisbon. Besides the gentrification’s forces have closed this small liquor shop, we could experience something different then and give life back to it.
The work “Lama” is about a Buddhist monk, who came to Portugal from northern China, several years ago, and settled in the Chinese diaspora of Martim Moniz. 81 years old already and speaking Portuguese very badly, he explained me a great part of his life story, in our casual encounters in Martim Moniz, during 2 years.
“Lama” is a tribute, in which we can observe the intersection between our reality and the dead’s world. The tree symbolizes my friend, who has gone to another reality, but part of him is still in our world. It is a constant dialectic of presence in various realities. It gives us a consciousness, that it’s necessary a constant death and rebirth.
The Myth offers us the principles of all having a sacred place, of consciousness of the divine world and of the whole world being a sacred place of connection with the spiritual world. The earth was invested with spiritual powers, everything was mythical and sacred. We must give this meaning back to the world. The earth must become again a kind of temple, a place of meditation. As we bring the concept of the sacred back into our days, we are claiming again the earth as a place of evolution for the human species.
This is what “Lama” left me before leaving for another reality.
HIM 