Opening: 11 September at 6 pm

The exhibition Ana Hatherly. Poet to Poet presents a group of works by Ana Hatherly (Porto, 1929 – Lisbon, Portugal, 2015) from the Serralves Collection that reveal the lines of artistic research underlaying her distinctive approach to the plasticity of writing.

An artist, poet, essayist, film director, researcher and teacher, Ana Hatherly dedicated herself to a wide range of disciplines and forms of creation, standing out in the artistic context from the 1960s onwards, as a central figure of Portuguese Experimental Poetry, of which she was one of the main theorisers. The movement’s historical anchorage derives fundamentally from the profound academic research that Hatherly undertook into Portuguese baroque poetry and her fascination for the cultural production of this period would come to permeate her entire artistic, literary, and academic work. Hatherly's universe of references is, however, much wider: from the study of oriental calligraphy the artist finds in writing ‘a silent way of representing speech, which is, in fact, drawing’. The writing as drawing and drawing as poetry would be the foundation of Hatherly’s artistic practice over more than five decades.

Poet to Poet highlights the importance of dialogue in Ana Hatherly’s work, not only with artists and poets of her generation but with figures from distant periods and geographies – from Camões to Deleuze or with the anonymous creators of archaic Chinese writing and contemporary graffiti. This exhibition, conceived specifically for the Cine-Teatro Garrett in Póvoa de Varzim in the context of the literary festival Correntes d’Escritas, gathers iconic works by the artist, rare sculptural objects, memorable publications, and some previously unseen artworks that show how Ana Hatherly weaves this intricate creative dialogue into her artistic practice.

The exhibition, curated by Joana Valsassina, is part of the Serralves Collection Touring Exhibitions Programme, which aims to make the Foundation’s collection accessible to different audiences across the country.

Production: Fundação de Serralves — Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto