Why Does the Body End at the Skin?

Pauliana Valente Pimentel
Encontros da Imagem 2023

Bodies That Speak

In portraiture, the pose touches upon theatre. In posing, we believe we are saying here I am, this is who I am to a gaze that pierces the skin, penetrates the flesh, and reaches a depth within the body. Yet, in the fervour or awareness of this wound, we ultimately say here I am, this is who I am before you—an affectation of the body, a display of another order that dwells within us.

What kind of theatre are we referring to when we speak of portraiture? The pose is not an artificial excess; it is an intentional exceeding, the narrative action in which we reveal our subjectivity. The portrait, opening a space between its exteriority and our interiority, exposes the pose, obeying less the logic of representation and more that of presentation. The pose tells us that our body does not end at the skin; rather, it is an instrument of communication: here I am, before you.

Created as part of an artistic residency at the invitation of the Encontros da Imagem Festival, the series of portraits presented by Pauliana Valente Pimentel of young residents in Braga attests to the authenticity of presence. In a way, we can consider that the subtlety of her photographs preserves these bodies as subjects, in that the truth of the pose prevents the photographic act from reducing them to mere traces of survival, from turning these bodies into spectres. These bodies speak.

In this sense, Pauliana Valente Pimentel transforms the experience of the exhibition and our role as spectators. Through her gesture, these bodies—surrounding us, speaking to us—urge us to abandon the distant position of contemplation. Through portraiture, they demand to be looked at as presences, to be seen in their subjectivity. They summon us to action, to interrelation through the work of art. The experience of the exhibition becomes the event of this singularity, of our creation and recreation of meaning.

Ricardo Escarduça