Infra (Long Road Home)

Aged pine wood
250 × 110 cm
Inkjet print on matte adhesive paper
144 × 115 cm
Gasometer with LED lamp programmed with Morse code algorithm
34,5 × 12 cm

Infra (Long Road Home) investigates the interconnection between territory, history, and memory, using photography as a gesture of visual extraction, analogous to mining. The project focuses on the Panasqueira mines and tungsten — a mineral historically loaded with geopolitical and socioeconomic significance. It explores the underworld as a symbolic territory of discovery and revelation, proposing reflections on the cycles of transformation in the world and the invisible forces that shape it.

“(…) A photograph, a flashlight, and a suspended gasometer occupy the interior of one of the rooms, while a wooden barricade blocks or restricts visibility into the second room. These are two elements that assert themselves before the viewer’s gaze, creating an apparent play between concealment and revelation.

(…) This work originates from Neto’s visit to the Panasqueira Mines in Covilhã, dedicated to the extraction of copper ores and, primarily, tungsten — a mineral that was extremely important in the geopolitics of the First and, especially, the Second World War. This was a moment of great importance for twentieth-century history in Portugal, and in Europe, given Portugal’s seemingly neutral position between the Allies and Nazi Germany.

The mine, in general terms, can be seen as a model of a city or an inner world, encrypted and closed off to those who do not belong, like an ant colony, organized as an alternative society — a kind of underworld that on one hand feeds on the solar world, and on the other nourishes it, whether with raw materials or with conspiracy theories residing in that subworld. In this sense, Infra (Long Road Home) carries a romantic aura, somewhere between Film Noir and fictional narratives of the occult, such as H. P. Lovecraft’s literary work At the Mountains of Madness, which forms part of the artist’s reference imagery.

Yet, this work does not let us forget the political and social dimensions of the human condition, inscribed in the history of the mining site and in the map of the artist’s references. (…)” — João Silvério

Exhibition view from Kubikulo — KUBIKGALLERY