If that is love. Do not love me.

The tradition of portrait painting. Portraits are on the foresight formation of art history and our way of looking at art. As long as the draft is the departure to introduce or represent the world, concepts and thoughts, the portrait will exist to interact with reality. Depicting famous or ordinary people, the portrait is one of the main conduits for perception and understanding of the western artistic production.

In this exhibition, Panmela Castro outlines the development of her portraits. They rise from a established connection between the artist and the pictured one, and the paintings come from each subject's testimony. Such reports build a relationship between the audience, work and artist. This triad makes the artwork.

Strokes and words. Panmela Castro's art needs to set them. In #HerStory, her body
acts after the European painting tradition of depicting important figures and making people and moments eternal in the screen. They are people to be immortalized indeed. Their testimonies describe ordinary scenes in our society. We are offended in a daily basis as if it was nothing, in the dynamics of grief which builds the character, of pain which leads to the reduction, of wealth as a reward for forge.

To undergo fire and sword expecting delicate and gentle replies... Panmela invisibilizes the tormentor and soars the victim, not as a redeemer but as an element of her own existence. The violence suffered, herein as a set, does not express individual cases which give these women merit for being portrayed. Our stories are standard, laid out in our bodies, recognized.

Exceptional indeed, these women and Panmela.

Thus, portray, to portray, to be portrayed, to be exhibited, to be art, to follow the process, to deal with art, to be part of the artwork. All this shared complexity. The exhibition makes it possible to have a relationship.

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- Keyna Eleison (Curator)