Eduardo Bragança is a self-taught artist who paints with soul. His works are a reflection of the emotions that floods him, the little things that beautify the world and the people he meet along that route that took him to Brazil.
You were linked to fashion and then you changed course to the arts, why this change?
Eduardo Bragança: Despite my training is fashion design, I was soon invited at the end of the course to be part of a Portuguese footwear design team and accepted the challenge despite being about to change radically of area, because still the fashion market in Portugal was too competitive for the size and space that the country had. Moved forward with this project and I was two years working on shoes, on my first visits to the country at fairs, museums and the world in search of inspiration for a visual language, found in painting this vision. Over time I became a self-taught and created my artistic expression that I always liked, art met this objective in a more detached way, without that need, that aim and competitive search for a result. The painting brought me a more altruistic result and more worthy, this search also resulted from a shortfall in relation to an area that is a very bad, that we live much of the competition and spent so much time already in something I did not like as much as I envisioned what would my career in fashion.
It is then that you decide to leave this universe?
EB: No, then with this professional experience jump from creator to creative in a company also linked to fashion, but more in the audiovisual, advertising and ads on TV. During four years that was my entrepreneurial journey, breaking away from the company came up the painting into something more serious, my friends pushed me and encouraged the idea of showing the work that was in the garage. The first exhibition I sold some paintings, but only in the following sold all and as I continued to succeed started to show my work one or twice a year.
Let's address your works, there are several stages, at first you portrait your emotions, it was an inner quest in the first case?
EB: It was yes, it was a discovery phase. At the time when almost broke up with my professional connections to dedicate myself exclusively to painting, talking about it was a very strong bond, I discussed human values, things that symbolized more than the work expressed, the search for understanding and respect and love between people. During all these years I was discovering myself as painter, also did the same with a regard to human relationships, I was me linking more to personal and human themes that are always present in all my work, through sentences or short poems.
Another of your inspirations of a more later stage, comes from abroad, when you began to travel, you made huge portraits of people and even did an art video project, which is "exploring emotions". Tell me about this work and how you began to explore the video that was an area that you had not yet research.
EB: Well, it was in 2011 that I decided that my work would have a jump since started selling to Greece and I saw more results. I thought if I turn to the outside my work would have a different facet again, another counterpart and this would be positive because when I sold my works in Athens had an interesting return. From then on there was a call to explore a project more in a context outside of my country and that made me rethink what I was doing, what should perform as a creator. It would be a different alternative and then decided to join one of the tools that already knew who was filming to idealize a project also very emotional, connecting people and recording them on film after answering a simple question, so that all these individuals were present beautifully, or on a real way. My goal was to bring that content of each trip, uncover the answers and content of the many people who responded to my question and then portray all this, these sketches in one work by each country. The process was random whether in the choice of the people, whether the content of the questions, because everything was done by me walking the city streets for hours to choose someone and have a dialogue, to be five minutes or two hours and it brought me a great personal and professional enrichment.
Now you have a new project on video?
EB: I am making a short film with a Portuguese actress and other non-actress, I'm finishing this short film, because it involves several people from various countries, the soundtrack is from Caetano Veloso and the others are in London. I'm in this project for almost two years and I hope this year to have everything finalized. I have no intention to be professional in this area, I just want to show a story made by several people.
But this is a new phase of your work, artistic videos? Painting is no longer part of the part of your body of work, or not really?
EB: Not at all. Since 2012 I do travel and do the disclosure of my name, to get the message of who I am and what I do, but in a way detached without having a gallery behind or an agent. I met a lot of people in this wanderings, gave me knowledge and it certainly opened a lot of doors, in a more professional manner. I went to Brazil where I had a lot of success and got here one agent who introduced me to a gallery that signed me in Curitiba, this professional relationship for few years ended up becaming more personal, I changed my life radically and only now I'm finishing up my studio here. As all this took a long time, I made a stop at painting, I had to bring all my stuff it is a complicated logistics from Portugal to Brazil and was in this stop I was focused on the short film. However, I continued to paint enough, but not always show it up, because fortunately I do not feel the need to show it, I do two to three works per month and this is an average very demanding for an artist, virtually nullifies the need to exhibit instead of having to sell.
What inspires these new paintings?
EB: What inspires me is this diversified bond with people, relations of different styles and in different countries knowing directly my client, I do not do the typical artist's approach which is linked to the gallery and let them do all this contact . I'm like a one man show, have architects from different parts of the world who see my work, also through my professional page, I have people requesting work and thus get a wide variety of very good relations and experiences as a person and artist. I have a very great capacity for work, I have a lot of sensitivity and taste and it all can always produce new works. I might add that one of my clients asked me to present a project in Macau, he is a fashion photographer and invited me to do a plastic intervention in his studio, in the walls, I accepted and was a rewarding relationship. This type of stimulus to the creation arise in travel, meeting new people and inspiring me with things quite simple, what I feel. Incidentally, the project "exploring emotions" I felt a very great transition with the arrival of the crisis to Portugal not at the financial level, but on an emotional side and this led me to the streets and people in a more instropective way, is it not most important to value less things that it did not matter, rather than our neighbour? I was hitting that button and my work reflects this same subject, showing the relationship of love between two people, or mutual neighbor, or a charitable relationship, always around it, I think this is my personal touch and walk always around this theme. There are also so simple things that inspires me and the more horrors I see on the news, I create something that is the opposite of what is reported. Now, Brazil is going through a major crisis, as entered in Portugal and we feel it, but the energy of the people, happiness, carnival, color and I shape how they view all this is also a source of inspiration and it all changed to my painting. Since here I did not show anything, but my work is more alive due to a more colorful life in Brazil (laughs).
This then is your new project showing a more colorful stage of your painting?
EB: Yes, but I do not read very well in showing these works. I have a project that is being exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Curitiba, is connected to an institution of social solidarity. My works are exhibited there and are printed on t-shirts to be sold in order to obtain funds. Another exhibition will take place in the museum Guido Viaro who proposed me a space to show my work, but this is going to be schedule, because the date depends on me. I'm selling many works on paper, because people asked me a lot of this, the canvas require a very large logistics, then there is another problem in the works on canvas that is shipping, the cost very to the point of being almost the price of the work.
These last works there are many phrases in French.
EB: I have many clients from Paris and normally I end up writing something that often helps to indicate this is my client and not only because I have this connection with these countries, it is a poetic way of expressing what I felt a most beautiful way and not so flat that other words would have, because it has that sound. I've used Italian, Portuguese and just refuse to use Nordic languages, it does not make sense. I have Swedish customers, but the sentences above all reflect this my poetic side, like to talk and express myself in these languages, I appreciate that phonetic exploration and see this result in the end.
