Ana Jotta
On peut... On peut encore...
Over the course of the past five decades, Ana Jotta (1946, Lisbon) has developed a deeply personal artistic vocabulary that rejects and even antagonizes all forms of classification and identification. Instead of any recognizable style, she takes from, subverts, and trespasses across various aesthetic categories, making a world that exists only on her own terms. Instead of attempting to encompass Jotta’s entire practice, the exhibition narrows its focus around a specific aspect of her work: the expanded sense she brings to the act of drawing.
Ana Jotta, Fala-Só (detail), 2017. Bleach on blue cotton, 164 x 4000cm, Courtesy of the artist. Temporary Gallery - Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Cologne, 2018. Photos © Simon Vogel
Drawn to collecting the most unclassifiable images, objects, phrases, or even marks on a wall, her acts of gathering are fully enmeshed within her acts of making, and as she extracts from what she experiences in the world, she puts the pieces back together in an order that is entirely her own. Rejecting any claims of authorship or authority, Jotta considers her work to be what emerges as she constantly situates and re-situates her own life within the world around her.
Ana’s work weaves together strings of small life encounters. It is full of detail, pathos, and eccentricity. She is fiercely attentive, always alert to her surroundings, and when a specific word, piece of fabric, or image crosses her path, she recognizes it as containing the traces of a daily life—proof that life has happened to it and that it can be brought into the space of art.
While some of her drawings involve pencil and paper, many of them are unbound from the confines of the page and exist as embroideries, sewn leather, bleached fabric, and even objects. For Jotta, to draw is to draw out—in the sense of demonstrating, discovering, or fleshing out the potential connections that lie dormant between disparate images and references. In her hands, to draw is also to draw from—to take, to appropriate, and to extract from the world. And yet even the simple act of drawing a line, in its most basic sense, is about creating links and forging associations and serves as an apt metaphor for her process more generally. The artist expands the language of drawing by inventing a field where sketches, stitches, scribbles, silhouettes, scratches, and scissors contribute to an ecosystem of overlapping gestures. They mirror her approach as an artist and embody her disregard for the categories and boundaries that traditionally separate aesthetic registers—including the line between art and life.
Ana sees herself as someone who doesn’t conform to shared social norms and values. But to operate at the margins of social conventions doesn’t necessarily mean to revolt against society—in her own words, the artist is the one who growls but doesn’t bite.
Curators: Anthony Huberman and Miguel Wandschneider
Coordinating curator: Pauline Hatzigeorgiou
With the generous support of:
M. & Mme António & Anne Castro Freire
Mme Sylvie Winckler
Casa São Roque - Peter Meeker Collection
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ana Jotta (b.1946, Lisbon) has built a body of work that challenges notions of authorship and that obscures the line between art and life. From the late 1970s until the late 1980s, she worked in theatre both as an actress and costume and stage designer. On the side, she started her practice as an artist working across all media. She has had monographic exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zurich (2024), Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2023), Casa São Roque - Centro de Arte, Porto (2019), Temporary Gallery, Cologne (2018), Établissement d'en face, Brussels (2016), Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine (2016), and Culturgest, Porto (2016). A first retrospective of her work was presented at the Serralves Museum in Porto in 2005 and a second one at Culturgest, in Lisbon, in 2014. She lives and works in Lisbon.
Related Events
Look Who's Talking: Regina Barunke (EN)
Look Who's Talking: Etienne Wynants (NL)
Lecture on Ana Jotta by Clément Dirié (FR)
Conversation between the curators (EN)
Opening: Ana Jotta & Christopher Kulendran Thomas
With the support of
Casa São Roque - Peter Meeker Collection
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
M. & Mme António & Anne Castro Freire
Mme Sylvie Winckler
Mixed Media
Watch and listen to additional videos and sounds around Ana Jotta's exhibition at WIELS.