Practice: Video, sculpture, painting
Ludgero Almeida (Guimarães, Portugal, 04/28/1989) is a visual artist, was a doctoral fellow of the Foundation for Science and Technology, and a non-doctoral integrated researcher at I2ADS of FBAUP (Porto, PT). He bases his work on archives, photographic documentation, historical accounts, found materials and emotional memories. His goal is to reflect, critique and challenge us to see the contemporary and historical world through the lens of reality and fiction. His work has focused particularly on the issue of representation, the visibilities and invisibilities fabricated by historiography, and the way social and cultural imaginaries are constructed – as can be seen in his research “From the Absent Image”, begun in 2019, which explores the history of the cotton itinerary, from the fields to the factories of the Ave Valley. He works in multiple fields of visual arts, such as video-essay, installation, sculpture and painting. Since 2012, he has exhibited in Portugal, Spain and Brazil, at institutions such as the University of Goiás and the UNESP Institute of Arts in São Paulo; RAMPA and Silo Cultural Space in Porto; CAAA – Center for Art and Architecture Affairs, and CIAJG – José de Guimarães International Arts Center in Guimarães.
Areas of interest: History, memory, archives, cotton, walking
Why are you a part of “Magic Carpets”: I’ve joined Magic Carpets because of my research called “From the Absent Image” related to the cotton itinerary, the representation and invisibilities that were produced by history of this itinerary.
“Magic Carpets” project
“The sound of the Swarm” (2025) and “Threshold bodies” (2025)
For this residency, I decided to reflect on the historical connections between the organism, the machine, and the hybrid, suggested by an encounter with a beehive in an industrial ruin in this region; my fascination with bees; and the affectionate relationship of a former worker with beekeeping. Through an installation and a video essay, I intend to discuss how biologism and mechanicism have served, throughout history, as metaphors for human society and the interpretation of reality. Both participated in the construction of a way of understanding the world of work, the division of tasks, and the hierarchies that exist in society, and specifically in industry, the expropriation of labor, and extractivism. At the same time, I was interested in reflecting on the current metaphor of the hybrid, which has been producing its own reconfigurations of the human, society, and nature, in a time of global combustion and environmental crisis. To this, I approached Teatro da Coelima, a theater group that emerged at the Coelima factory, and decided to work specifically with a former worker, Alexandre Moreira, on the production of the video essay entitled “The Sound of the Swarm.” He worked for decades at that factory and, in his free time, dedicated himself to beekeeping. This affectionate relationship with bees and their memory of the factory fascinated me and was one of the driving forces behind the development of my proposal. I had multiple encounters with him and received his input, particularly through his knowledge of bees and the history and memory of work and textiles, as well as through his reading of the film’s text and his acting.
During this residency, I also had the opportunity to interact with several factories in the region and with people whose lives, in various ways, are linked to textile production. Through this interaction, I collected various technical devices through which I created the installation “Threshold bodies” which consists of a set of bodies, made of amber and beeswax, featuring devices that integrated with the use of artificial intelligence and, at the same time, for thinking about extractivism and environmental degradation that, in other ways, continue to have implications even under ecological discourses.
Past projects
“From the Absent Image” (2022)
Type: Solo exhibition at Rampa (Porto, Portugal)
he building where Rampa operates, as well as the massive construction that sits on the following block known as “Palácio do Comércio”, materialised in the mid 1940s a substantial real estate investment by the company Ferreira e Filhos Lda.It was from Riba de Ave, some 50 miles North, that its owner Delfim Ferreira built an industrial and financial empire, based primarily in the cotton textile industry, that took him to the throne of richest man in Portugal and permanent resident of the Serralves palace. In the underground warehouse now occupied by Rampa toiled the carpenters, metal workers and masons who maintained this group of buildings.
The history of the space – punctuated by the myth of Delfim Ferreira and by the erasure of the many who effectively built it – echoes the topic of this exhibition by Ludgero Almeida, himself born and raised in the industrial region of the Ave valley.
In “Da Imagem Ausente” the artist analyses the processes through which the region’s historic narrative is constructed, questioning the mythologies that glorify its fake prosperity, blind to the bleak living conditions of most of his fellow citizens.
The creative process undertaken by Ludgero Almeida develops as he roams through the territory collecting and registering the signs from the history that is yet to be told. “Da Imagem Ausente” confronts the viewer with a storyboard that has been re-drawn, exposing the subjectivity of all major historic narratives.
“Machine Destroyers” in the “Problems of the primitivism” (2024)
Type: Artistic installation in the Collective exhibition and catalog
The work I produced for this exhibition, titled Machine Destroyers (2024) — the homonymous title of Christian Ferrer’s book (2006) related to the Luddite movement in England — uses a series of found documents to draw a parallel between the subliminal resistance and boycotts of workers and the destruction caused by pests — fungi, insects, and other creatures — that became obstacles to the Portuguese colonial and industrial project in cotton fields and factories. To this end, I produced a set of sculptural beings made of resin and graphite powder that occupy and overlap the different elements of the installation, thereby provoking new readings, visibilities, and invisibilities in these materials.
For more information please see in here and here.
“Pitar na cangosteira” (2023)
Type: Collective exhibition and catalog
The Project “Pitar na Cangosteira” by Ludgero Almeida, Max Fernandes, and Pedro Bastos in the Ave Valley is based on several walks in the area, resulting in photographic and audiovisual records, diary entries, collections of objects, and reflections on being in and navigating the landscape. This exhibition presents works that bring us closer to the experiences, tactile and visual memories, playful, political, historical, and ecological issues that permeate, in convergent or divergent ways, the work of each artist. The work “Pedras Enquanto Máscaras” (2023), which I created especially for this exhibition, uses the technique of molding and negative excavation in graphite stone to problematise the ambivalence between presence and absence and question the authenticity of the public face. In this process, it establishes a counter-memory that highlights the limits of monumental representation.
“On the liminal appearance” (2025)
Type: Curating an exhibition
“From the absent Image” (2024)
Type: Article
The project presents a research centred on the reverberations of artistic practice in the face of institutional and private archives, images and trace objects found in Vale do Ave (Portugal), related to the history, imagery and memory of the itinerary of cotton and the textile industry in this territory. Through walking, gleaning of images, documents and objects, and a critical process of fabulation, artistic languages are activated, questioning the prevailing monolithic narratives and discourses on how history is constructed and instituted in public spaces, forming regional and national identities and social and collective imaginaries. In this way, the absences and negatives produced by a monumental history are problematised as aporetic spaces that are simultaneously productive and agents of other potential narratives of the past, present and future.
What inspires you as an artist? I’m fundamentally inspired by encounters with various materials. Over the years, I’ve collected materials, objects, and images found in various environments, such as those I’ve found in various industrial ruins. I believe these elements, which include images, photographic negatives, worker X-rays, architectural designs, and technical drawings of machinery, among others, play a fundamental role in the direction of my research, and they provide me with clues on how to work, both conceptually and visually.
What do you think is the purpose of art? I don’t think art has a specific purpose, an exclusive utility, or a radically transformative social role. I believe that when it positions itself this way, fulfilling a predetermined function, it becomes overly pretentious, pacified, and conditioned. In any case, certain artistic productions can contribute on various fronts that go beyond the field of the production of the sensitive that, in general, we would attribute to artistic practice. I believe that my artistic practice, specifically, without neglecting aesthetic and poetic resolutions, also encompasses a critical commitment and an engagement with social, ecological, and political issues. But art doesn’t provide a resolution to these issues. It perhaps broadens the questioning, confronting us with a deeper understanding of the enigma of these questions. Art is thus not a place of results and transparencies, but a place of incompleteness, opacity, and the aporetic.
Contacts
Email: d.ludgeroalmeida[et]gmail.com | Instagram