Offshoot

Originals of the book «Estância do Sino Coberta»

Diniz Conefrey

November 8, 2024 -  January 10, 2025

This is a long-term project.A narrative and visual plot born several times ago. From the trip to India made by the artist, the designer Diniz Conefrey, in 2022, touring the places of the Buddha's life, discovering in this purpose, the richness and contradictions of a historically and culturally intense country. Dthe memory rescued from this experience and the discovery of the life of Xuanzang, a Chinese Buddhist monk celebrated for the trip made to Indiain the seventh century collecting original texts on Buddhism. Dthe research work carried out from there, around this figure and the place that celebrates him in India, a mausoleum closeto the ruins of the ancient university of Nalanda. And then, the literary writing of an argument that sought not only to embody Xuanzang's journey, giving it existence in the story and in thought, but to project the experience of the journey to the present, through the contemporary concerns, of a woman in solitary transit through India.

To build the plot, but above all to proceed with the physical and psychological characterization of the two characters who intersect in time and geographical itinerancy, Diniz Conefrey collected all the information possible. Photographs, drawings, literary accounts, testimonies of various kinds. "As in love, everything is valid" he says, to follow the intention and significant density of the work. If there was enough material available about Xuanzang in order to captivate the character, even if fictionalized by writing and drawing, starting from a real existence, Nora, the female figure, was entirely imagined. "It was a very cinematic process, as if it were a casting" through the observation of anonymous faces.

"One day I saw Nora on the street. It was what I imagined" but the writing in the first person, constructing the feminine, resulted from many self-formulated questions (how would Nora dress? What would be your stance? Howwould you deal with certain situations? What would you feel in a certain place? howwould your voice sound?) and conversations with Maria João Worm, also an artist, his partner, co-responsible for the design and edition of the book through the seal created by both of them Quarto de Jade.From the cutting and purification of the text, from a work of découpage that isolated only the essential of the reading, the elaboration of the visual narrative developed in parallel. Usually by the conception of each board, which in the present case, means in the horizontal visualization of two pages, fulfilling an ambulatory effect of the gaze, organizing sequences through elements that will come to constitute the backgrounds, with different papers, of color, textured sheets, or even TAC's sheets. Overlapping these, landscapes and figures were defined, drawn from a primeval drawing made on tracing paper and which contained the entirety of history. A permanent articulation between image and text, "between what informs, what is too much and what the page asks for".

Three objectives guided the project. Even if starting from the life of a real character who lived centuries ago and from the writings collected by him, it does not make a reconstruction of the period. The narrator would be omniscient but the voice would not be Xuanzang's. Then it was imperative that the narrative be brought to the present day and it would then be the imagined figure of Nora, narrator in the first person, who would make thisbridge between the two periods.

A dedicated work, with a complexity and self-demand self-proposed by Diniz Conefrey, which was largely made possible by the award of aliterary creation grant by the Directorate-General for Books, Archives and Libraries revealing how important the support given to the creation and development of artistic processes is.

The exhibition of this set of fourteen original plates, devoid of text, reinforces the aesthetic and poetic sense of the images, allowing the visitor a silent journey through the plot.

Diniz Conefrey  (b. 1965, Lisbon)

Poet, illustrator, he added to his self-taught training the drawing course offered at the National Society of Fine Arts. In the last three decades he has participated as an illustrator and author of graphic narratives, in several newspapers, magazines and publishers, in addition to having taken several training courses.

In 2011, he created, with Maria João Worm, the publishing label Quaro de Jade where he has been publishing some books of his own.

He was a scholarship holder, in Portugal, from the IPLB (Portuguese Institute of Books and Libraries) in 2000 and from the Mexican State, for Artistic Creation Resorts, in 2005, 2007 and 2015. More recently, in 2024, he was awarded a literary creation grant for comics, by the Directorate-General for Books, Archives and Libraries.

He collaborated in the magazine Cão Celeste, from 2012 to 2019 and published the poetry books No Coração de Agave, Douda Correria, 2017; Afluentes de Adobe (with Maria João Worm and Alexandre Sarrazola), Quarto de Jade, 2018; A Wire Goes Through the Night, Companhia das Ilhas, 2019; Fistula, Assírio & Alvim, 2024.

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