Superfície is pleased to present 27032025-6.720-280-68 / 24052025-5.328-222-68, a solo show by the artist Ana Amorim, opening on Thursday, March 27th. With a conceptual artistic practice centered on daily routines, the exhibition highlights the methodical way in which the artist registers her own time, her experiences and movements, transforming each work into unequivocal proof of her existence. The very title of the exhibition reiterates the systematic exercise of registering her experiences: the locator numbers, used by Ana Amorim to taxonomize her production, refer both to the time set in calendars (hours, days, months and years) as well as  the elusive time – the hours and days remaining until the end of the year, for example. 

Using variable registering systems and different supports, her career is structured around two fundamental documents that consolidate her commitment to herself and her practice: the manifesto Conceptual Decisions (1988) and, later, the Art Contract (2001). These documents, and their strict guidelines- such as the use of basic materials and the refusal to commercialize her work or to participate in exhibitions sponsored by companies with questionable ethical conduct – determined the stance that kept her production outside the commercial art circuit for so many years. For Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro:

The contract is the basis of our legal system, and its origin from the Latin means to ‘draw together’ (con-trahere), to create a bond or connection. What Amorim’s contracts express is a strong desire to be tethered to her commitment to art making, to make public her wish to integrate art and life. This formal commitment to art making makes explicit the difference between producing art (for its own sake) and being an art producer (for a system that demands it). 

Since 1987, when her project took the form of Mental Maps, Ana Amorim has been accumulating registers of her being alive. The Map Books (1987/88) are described by the artist as her “most important work” and  are also the first books with Mental Maps being registered. They will be displayed in a stack, bound together so that they cannot be seen, alongside the locator number – like the exhibition title itself – and a clock, which includes the viewer and their own time into the work. The installation sums up the artist’s thinking: it is in the book that the first register takes place , quickly and spontaneously, creating an evidence of another day of her existence. For nearly four decades, the artist has spent her evenings, and often late nights, drawing all her daily movements.

For Ana Amorim, the main source of her practice is her own experience in the world, in a way where there is no difference between making art and living. With Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro’s text, the exhibition presents approximately 20 works that incorporate different Mental Map routines using various supports developed by the artist over the years.