2024
Cicconia Cicconia
Exhibition of the 15th Edition of the Fundação EDP New Artists Award. Curated by Catarina Rosendo, Luís Silva e Sérgio Mah. At MAAT
Fictional characters, plants, organisms and other beings, real, technological, natural or imaginary places, and strange, bizarrely interwoven narratives all feature in Cicconia Cicconia, the installation by the artist Francisco Trêpa (1995, Lisbon) on show in the exhibition of the 15th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award. With elements rich with ambiguity, fragility and potency, made from ceramic, wood, paraffin and wool, they evoke an urban landscape we recognise, but that is here reimagined both in the scale of the sculptures- with nests that shelter giant storks entwined, interlaced, intimate — and in the remnants of the ruined tower, which evokes the vulnerability of our existence in a world facing destruction and collapse. The artist develops these ideas and other narratives through multiple elements from our collective imagination — landscapes, storks, high-voltage pylons — creating a complex baroque sci-fi scenario, a dystopian world filled with stories to tell.
Francisco Trêpa blends fiction, futurism, exaggeration and humour. This may explain why he sees himself in the concept of baroque sci-fi: not only for the exuberance of his sculptures, forms, colours and dimensions, but also for their dramatic nature, their emotional expressiveness, and the mythological, symbolic and fabulist references present in his work.
One of the most intriguing aspects of his practice lies precisely in the way these references disseminate in distinct bodies of work. We encounter pollinators, genderless figures, and body parts of living organisms we think are alive; they turn up repeatedly, entwining with other stories, fables and myths such as Aesop’s fable «The Fox and the Stork», or Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture The Rape of Proserpina, that continue to fascinate and influence the artist.
In Cicconia Cicconia, huge storks coexist alongside meta structures representing high-voltage pylons, in a relationship marked by dispute — for space, power and sovereignty and by empathy, harmony and love. When storks built their nests on these pylons in the past, they frequently damaged the infrastructure, causing their own deaths and power cuts in nearby villages and towns. This is a very objective view of the tension between technology and living beings, but it is also from this tension that the possibility of a greater reciprocity between technology and humanity arises.
Francisco Trêpa denounces the result of the embattled and disconnected relationships between human beings and natural resources, particularly in the context of our extractivist tendencies. He invites reflection on the Chthulucene, a concept proposed by Donna J. Haraway in her book Staying with the Trouble:
Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), which advocates for a reorganisation of the human and non-human species that cohabit on the planet, and challenges our human-centred perspective that comes at the cost of all others. Within this context, the artist imagines a new, post-human era inhabited by both new agents and beings and characterised by a new relationship between them, side-stepping the notion of finality or death and pointing instead toward renewal and transformation.
Through its shapes and sheer scale, the installation also has a strength in its materiality. The ceramic pieces were created during a residency at the Fábrica Viúva Lamego between December 2024 and March 2025, which allowed the artist to work and experiment on a large scale. The use of metal coated with paraffin, the wood, and the woollen yarn - materials so commonplace yet so distinct — conjure ideas of decay, destruction and fragility.
Above all, Cicconia Cicconia is about the potential of fiction and its capacity for metamorphosis, a profound transformation that is not just physical or formal, but also symbolic, emotional, and subjective.
Leonor Carrilho