FieldWorks Talk #4: Filipa Pontes & Aina Azevedo

The DicionáriosDeArtista (ArtistDictionaries) project started in 2010 and consists of a set of artist’s books, produced in Mozambique, Portugal, China, and Norway. The main objective is to create a compilation of graphic reflections on my relationship with places and their local culture.

It is site-specific, involves fieldwork and mixes drawing with hints of autoethnography. Using memory, self-reflection and imagination, Filipa takes a personal and self-referential investigation into certain aspects of contemporary culture and society. The specificities of the place are observed and lived but also viewed as an object for reflexive inquiry.

Filipa Pontes is a Portuguese visual artist and researcher. She pursues a degree in Graphic Design (ESAD.CR, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, 2005), a postgraduation in Creative Illustration (EINA, Barcelona, Spain, 2007) and a PhD in Fine Arts – Drawing (FBAUL, Lisbon, Portugal, 2020). She connects art practice with a socially engaged perspective rooted in a self-reflexive approach. Filipa Pontes works mainly in the drawing field to create performances, installations, and artist books. In the last ten years, she has participated in international exhibitions and artistic residencies. She also works as an independent curator and as a lecturer. She lives between Berlin and Lisbon.

Aina Azevedo is a Lecturer at Universidade Federal da Paraíba (Brazil). Since 2010, during her doctoral fieldwork in South Africa, she started to draw in her notebooks and became interested in the recognition of drawing in anthropology. She published articles about drawing as a research methodology and a way of displaying knowledge in anthropology, produced graphic essays, and also investigated the historical presence of drawing in anthropology since the dawn of the discipline and its developments today. In addition, she has been developing workshops on drawing and anthropology regularly, seeking to invite other anthropologists to draw. Aina is part of the Visual Anthropology Committee (CAV) of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (ABA) and curated the first Exhibition of Ethnographic Drawing of this association in 2020.