I met Carla Cruz at a conference we both spoke at in Lund in 2023. Her project, ‘Association of Friends of Angel Square’ (developed with Ângelo Ferreira de Sousa and others) was so beguiling and strange, I just had to dig deeper and include it in the Archive of Destruction.
I love projects / artworks / things that extend our thinking around what public art can be. This one takes a destroyed sculpture by a male artist produced in the 1990s for a shopping centre in Porto, and ushers it down a revolutionary path. The story involves the creation of a fake association, guided tours to the ruins of modernity, the installation of plaques to plaques, dinner parties in abandoned underground car parks and costumed pilgrimages through the streets of Porto. It’s gorgeous!! Read the story here!!
Image: José Rodrigues, The Angel, 1996. The sculpture is seen here in pieces, taped by municipal conservators to check for missing pieces after it had been cut into sections by thieves in 2006. Credit: aapA archive.