View of the installation Which house are you from? The children of Russia. Daily life episodes #4 at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery - Catholic University, Lisbon, 2023

The daily life at U.R.S.S. #1 - #11, 2019

10 color photographs, inkjet on Hahnemühle cotton paper; glued on Dibond; Nielson aluminum frames

91x73x4cm/73x91x4cm



The Spanish children in Crimea, 15.10.37, 2020

Inkjet printing on Hahnemühle cotton paper; Nielson aluminum frames

17,4x25x3cm

The daily life at U.R.S.S. #1 - #11, 2019

11 color photographs, inkjet on Hahnemühle cotton paper; glued on Dibond; Nielson aluminum frames

91x73x4cm/73x91x4cm



The Spanish children in Crimea, 15.10.37, 2020

Inkjet printing on Hahnemühle cotton paper; Nielson aluminum frames

17,4x25x3cm

The daily life at U.R.S.S. #1 - #11, 2019

11 color photographs, inkjet on Hahnemühle cotton paper; glued on Dibond; Nielson aluminum frames

91x73x4cm/73x91x4cm

View of the installation at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery - Catholic University, Lisbon

¿De qué casa eres? (Which house are you from?), 2017

Red glass neon, neon gas; electric wire; current transformer

30x190cm



Presente presente presente!(Present present present!), 2023

Red glass neon, neon gas; electric wire; current transformer

30x190cm

¿De qué casa eres? (Which house are you from?), 2017

Red glass neon, neon gas; electric wire; current transformer

30x190cm

Presente presente presente!(Present present present!), 2023

Red glass neon, neon gas; electric wire; current transformer

30x190cm

View of the installation at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery - Catholic University, Lisbon

¡Ay Carmela!, 2017

Radio turntables, vinyl records, speakers, amplifier; MP3 player, sound loop 8m; aluminum plinth

38x58x34cm (radio) + 50x58x34 (plinth)

View of the installation at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery - Catholic University, Lisbon

View of the installation at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery - Catholic University, Lisbon

Little girl from Russia #1 - #26, 2019

26 Drawings in graphite and colored by pencil on Montval Canson fine-grain watercolor paper 300g; 26 red passe-partout with yellow screen-printed text

29,7x21cm; 51x42cm

Mommy ́s embroidery + APQ sculpture/furniture #85A, 2019

Embroidery; aluminum plinth; glass bell

10x22cm; 85x25x25; 35x25x25cm

Red, yellow and purple #1, 2017

Digital film; three overhead projectors, video projector; tulle screen with colored flannel applications; three colored acetates (red, yellow and purple); 4 aluminum plinths; amplified speakers, MP3 player

Different dimensions

Present present present!

What interests me in the present is being present in present. However, it is so difficult to be, only for brief moments, always jumping back and forth between past and future. The present is the only moment that exists of action. In this sense, the now is also action. An offering, it manifests. Life. I love to live. To have present, to have in memory. "¿De qué casa eres?" How to talk about the unspeakable, my emotional difficulty in talking about this story of my mother. So many questions. We ask to ask even more questions, it's a game where answers don't come, they fall short of understanding. The mystery will always be there. Infinitely unreachable, as long as we are in love with this feeling. So many emotions. I appropriate my mother's story. Yes, this story is mine too. I inherited her experiences, a post-memory, where this heritage is made up of objects, photographs, songs, stories.

I dedicate this exhibition to my mother, Ângela Petra, with an immense love. I admire her strength of character, determination, resilience, her humanitarian values, and a kindness towards human beings.
At the age of 90 she is still giving consultations. Portuguese, she was born in Spain, in the Basque Country, lived in Ukraine and Russia from 4 to 24 years old (1937-1956) as a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, and has lived in Portugal since 1958. With some accent, despite being portuguese for 65 years, some people still ask her where she is from.
¿De qué casa eres? refers to different aspects of identity, such as geography, socio-political aspects, and language, and that being beyond individual control shape personality, but also the perceptions that others have of us.

Episodes of everyday life is to highlight the experience of identity in the present.

Ana Pérez-Quiroga
_____ 


Because of its many meanings in life and in the construction of identity, home is an emotional, social, cultural, and political concept that has been widely investigated in Ana Pérez-Quiroga's (1960, Coimbra) ¿De qué casa eres? Los niños de Rusia. Episodios de un cotidiano #4 is simultaneously a collective, shared and individual, unique story. Drawn from trans-historical, -cultural, -social, and -political relationships, it is an autobiographical project, which the artist began in 2016, and to which she is systematically adding new readings and which pays homage to the story of her mother, Ângela Petra, one of the 2,895 refugee children, Niños de Rusia, who during the Spanish Civil War, between 1936 and 1939, were sent to the Soviet Union without their families. Around 30,000 children were also taken in by Denmark, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Mexico, as well as France and several North African countries that were colonized by France until the middle of the 20th century. Unlike the refugee children in the other countries, due to the political differences between the Franco regime and the Soviet Union regime, the children who had been taken in by Russia could not return to their home country at the end of the Civil War - Ângela Petra lived in Russia until 1956, when she was 24 years old. By showing and reflecting on the multiple realities of the Niños de Rusia, from the post-memory experiences of someone who lived them without living, ¿De qué casa eres? confronts what is (re)known as History and stories, individual and collective, past and present. In the process she demonstrates how the capacity for empathy is inherent to the human being. May we never lose sight of it.

Luísa Santos