Ana Jotta

Birth : , Lisbon, Portugal

History

Ana Jotta was born in Lisbon in 1946, where she works and lives. After studying at Lisbon´s Fine Arts School and Brussels' École d'Arts Visuels de l'Abbeye de la Cambre, Ana worked as an actress and stage designer (1976-79) with "Produções Teatrais" (University Theatre, Lisbon). From 1980's onwards, she focused her activity on the visual arts and has been a regular presence at major art fairs and biennales (ARCO, Brussels, Johannesburg, Barcelona, etc.). Ana Jotta has build her work in a sequence of breakthroughs that embody some sort of erasement: of her own previous footsteps; of modernist ideology and post-modern mythologies; and of the notion of authorship - either by deconstructing it or rebuilding it, she has attempted to dismantle the idea of a coherent or univocal style. ​Through a bare economy of means, her work shows a great sense of intelligence and wit. With Ana Jotta, you can always expect the unexpected. Ana Jotta has showed her work at the most prestigious foundations and institutions such as Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, France; Etablissement d'en face, Brussels and at Malmo Konsthall, Malmo. She also showed her work at Culturgest Porto with the exhibition “CASSANDRA", Culturgest Lisboa with “A Conclusão da Precedente”, Museu de Serralves with "Rua Ana Jotta" and also in Casa de São Roque with the exhibition INVENTÓRIA. In 2013 she was awarded with the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize and in 2014 with the AICA Award. Later in 2017 Ana Jotta received the Rosa Shapire Award, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

Movies

Jotta: a minha maladresse é uma forma de délicatesse
Jotta: a minha maladresse é uma forma de délicatesse
Self
How to represent an artistic intention without reducing it to a description? How to do it preserving the intentionality of the gestus in an ambiguous andsubjective space where the individualism of the artistic perspective is set. “my maladresse…” proposes a viewpoint over Ana Jotta’s universe. An analogous portrait of her relations as an artist is created, setting parallel questions, as hermeneutics possibility and art as a value system. The link relating the trio (artist and director’s deuce) balances between familiarity, master and apprentice, subject and object; the distance and authority of the one behind the camera spreading light around artisticurgencies concerning how Work and Life overlay in this unquiet chase of the greater purpose: a search for consolation in the holy_burlesque of existential functionalism. A documental laboratory of reflexive limits.
A Portuguese Farewell
A Portuguese Farewell
In Africa, during the colonial war, a patrol is lost in the bush and a soldier dies in operation. Twelve years later, in Portugal, the soldier family meets in peace.
The Conversation Is Over
The Conversation Is Over
Production Design
The film was to be a documentary, but evolved during production to a fictional film. It nevertheless adheres strictly to the poems and letters exchanged by two of the most outstanding names of the Modernist Movement, Fernando Pessoa (in Lisbon) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro (in Paris). Their endless conversation was dramatically and suddenly terminated.
Silvestre
Silvestre
Production Design
A bewitching combinatory adaptation of the Bluebeard tale and a 15th century Portuguese fable of a damsel who disguises herself as a knight errant.