Our time is out of joint
13 January - 2 March 2024
Sismógrafo, Porto
This project started as a failed attempt of licking wounds, looking for accomodations and coming to terms with the presence of disability, neurodivergence, queer identity and gender non-conformity.
Elizabeth Freeman suggests that in Hamlet, Shakespeare states that ‘the time is out of joint’, implying that time can be felt in the body, deep in the bones and tissues, as some sort of ‘skeletal dislocation’. Linhares’ recent research and practice focus on the articulation of a dissonance among normativity, where neither their body nor their mind matches what societal values point as normal, expected, or standard. Linhares lives in Crip and Queer time, timelines that flow differently from those within the able-bodied, able-minded cishetero-norm that has been pushed as the ultimate version of human experience.
When one lives in Crip and / or Queer time, they fall through society’s cracks and gaps, and start living in transgression. The tyranny of normativity means that you either fit in it or you automatically are a transgressor: a rebel or a monster. As writer and artist Charlie Fox puts it: ‘I do not feel very much at home in the world’, leading one to look for other ways to feel validated or accepted in our experiences. Not only that, but also to re-fit a body, an identity or reclaim a word like ‘freak’ and give it your own twist. There lies a certain power in embodying the monster, against all fairytale storytelling that pushes a narrative of ‘overcoming’ and normative beauty standards. Being a beast also comes with the weight of being in the margin, where you are told no one wants to live. It is this sense of having what seemingly no one wants to have that causes dissonance and dislocation with normality, and that is how Linhares feels they became a monster. The body stores pain and trauma. living within Crip Queer time means living in a state of permanent deferral and loss.
Within this failure or fall from normativity, one can claim space and create a powerful existence, where knights in shining armor, wielding toxic positivity and futurity ideals, do not enter and ‘freaks’ with prosthetics can thrive. In this exhibition, a new set of work based on research developed in the Netherlands during the last 3 years is presented, exploring the contradictions and nuances of Queer Crip temporalities.
Our time is out of joint, 2024Installation
Printed PVC, wood, PVC tubes, spray paint, vinyl, granite, textile, paper
Variable dimensions
