PROJECT

The Outdoor, Jovens Criadores [Young Creators Billboard] Project, part of the ‘365 Algarve’ programme, is the result of a partnership between P28, Cultural Association, CIAC and the Municipality of Faro. This project, planned in three phases, with unveilings of new billboards in specific venues in the Algarve, began in October 2016 and continues until June, 2017.

The project’s manager and promoter is artist and researcher Sandro Resende. At CIAC, this project is coordinated by Mirian Tavares and Pedro Cabral Santo. The aim of ‘Outdoor, Jovens Criadores’ is to play a dynamic role in adopting an unconventional format in contemporary public art, revealed through artistic expressions by young people and emerging artists in the Algarve region, who are yet to gain recognition in the nation’s art scene, with site-specific works of art, created especially for a particular venue. This conceptual solution comprises an aesthetic necessity, guided by the medium used (in this case an advertising billboard) on which the artworks appear.

The aim is to reuse a type of medium, all too ubiquitous in the urban landscape, reclaiming what is its recognised effectiveness at communication for the purposes of art. The idea underlying this general programme has pragmatic origins: to involve unavoidable spaces in the current paradigm of the social and urban fabric so as to bring art to everyday life, by making use of advertising and information media, transition spaces and commercial artistic programming means/vehicles.

Beyond aesthetic enjoyment, occupying spaces usually associated with other purposes and traditionally unrelated to art will allow fairer access to art, capitalising on the availability of ordinary citizens, meeting them head-on and “forcing” them to access proposals of contemporary art. By internalising the previous premises and equating the appropriation of billboards in the Algarve’s hubs, the project once again accentuates its democratic nature, making available, in public, outdoor spaces, something almost always confined to exhibition and museum environments.

With this aesthetic (but also pragmatic) stance, we believe that we can achieve an ideal, characterised by the massification of access to art, in a true manifestation of the concept of public art, in which it spontaneously comes into contact with the viewer. ‘Outdoor, Jovens Criadores’ enables an easier, faster and more effective distribution of art to all audiences.