Shall we play?

What do you expect from an artwork?

For it to attract you or repulse you? Seduce or shock you? For it to be comforting or unsettling? Should it prompt you to pause or to act?

Art can do all that. It can trigger all these reactions and many more, whether emotional or cerebral. It can because, as Rancière posits, art ‘is not the transmission of the artist’s knowledge or inspiration to the spectator,’ but rather something ‘whose meaning is owned by neither.’ It can because, as emancipated spectators, we relate to art through ‘an unpredictable interplay of associations and dissociations,’ confronting what we witness with what we have already seen, done and dreamt.

What you expect and take away from an artwork will depend, it seems, on your willingness to play this game.

***

Susana Mendes Silva’s work rarely takes the form of an object. It generally takes shape in a place, physical or virtual, through the encounter between two or more people. Face to face, by letter, telephone or chat; through a message left in a lift, an advertisement in a shop window, a radio programme or a surprise party. Each encounter follows a series of principles defined by the artist, but the way it is manifested is invariably uncertain, shaped by what each participant brings to the table. Her practice takes shape precisely in the development of this unpredictable interplay in which she creates space for dialogue and for silence, for intimacy and humour, for the unusual and the erotic, for celebration and subversion.

The field of subversion is undeniably one of her favourites. It is there she finds ways to test the limits of art and perception, to challenge the role of the artist and those who encounter the work, or to tamper with the function of the spaces and objects around us — all in all, different ways of subverting the rules of the game. Her practice is frequently based on minimal gestures, delicate but incisive, that invite the body into the space, using language and drawing as means of expression and interaction. These gestures generate subtle interferences in places and concepts that are familiar to us and to which we attribute certain values.

This is the case with Untitled [Get Back], a durational performance conceived with Jari Marjamäki in 2023 for Appleton Box. Marking the launch of Get Back, a cycle curated by Carolina Trigueiros which brought back to the space artists who have exhibited there before, the performance unfolds in counterpoint to the installation Square Disorder, conceived by Susana Mendes Silva for Appleton Square 15 years earlier, in 2008.  Two complementary spaces — white cube and black box — find their essence radically subverted, despite both remaining practically unaltered and virtually empty.

In Square Disorder, the artist rethinks the rigid, immaculate white cube by introducing in it a delicate organic mesh, almost imperceptible to the eye but reactive to the movement of the body, almost immaterial but profoundly tactile. In Untitled [Get Back], the darkened space is occupied by an indistinct noise that absorbs, involves and confounds us, culminating in an unexpected moment of obfuscation and confrontation. In the first case, the luminous space appears to be completely bare, and it is only when we enter, sharpen our gaze and move around, that we can discover the artist’s minimal gesture. In the second, the space seems opaque and inscrutable, only to reveal itself empty, suddenly exposing us, to the sound of a blaring provocation. In the unpredictable interplay triggered by each work, reactions tend to diverge diametrically, from attraction to repulsion, from startlement to frustration.

More incisive than delicate, Untitled [Get Back] does not offer a mere encounter, but a resounding confrontation. ‘If you are disappointed it’s your fault!’ declares the artist.

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What did you expect, then, from this artwork?

What expectations did you place in it? And what, precisely, did they relate to: to the work itself or to art in general? To what you see or to who you are faced with?

Or perhaps you could ask instead: what does it demand of you?

The performance is yours, ours. The expectations that we bring to it; the questions and implications we take from it, are too.

Shall we play?

Joana Valsassina 2025