English As She Is Spoke An exhibition by João Pedro Vale

Synopsis

The point of departure for the exhibition English As She Is Spoke is an absurd 19th-century Portuguese-English conversation guide written by Pedro Carolino, a complete unknown whose lack of linguistic knowledge made any translation work inadvisable.

The artists have taken up this logic to create a “comedy of deception” in the form of two elements: on the one hand, a film starring John, a young second-generation Azorean emigrant from the USA/Canada, and his interrogator, both of whom compose sketches alluding to the structure of the English educational television series and the Portuguese magazine; on the other hand, a series of sculptures and drawings evoking prison environments and learning contexts that form the setting of the film or refer to the iconography of the Azores.

Curator

Miguel Amado