Esper Postma, Xavier Robles de Medina, Ayaka Terajima, Maria Trabulo
Capture Change
22 April- 20 May 2023
Press release
Nouveaux deuxdeux is honored to present its inaugural group show titled “Capture Change”, showcasing various works by four diverse artists, who explore a range of themes through various mediums: Esper Postma, Xavier Robles de Medina, Ayaka Terajima and Maria Trabulo.
Esper Postma’s (*1988, Amsterdam) practice reflects the way that images 'travel' both through time and space, evolve and become reinterpreted depending on the respective context of their manifestation. As a result, they invariably reflect the prevailing opinions, beliefs and fashions of the given time in order to foster and develop them. Reinterpreting images and artefacts ranging from the Middle Ages to contemporary popular culture, his recent installations reveal connections between the politics of representation, past and present.
The bronze sculpture “Genius of Facism Sport” derives from a public statue located in Rome. The statue depicts a naked male from ancient Rome, making the fascist salute. Made by Italo Griselli in 1939, it was originally named Genio del Fascismo. After WWII, the statue was altered in a futile attempt to cover up its fascist origin. The title was changed to Genio dello Sport and the statue was given ancient Roman boxing gloves to wear. “Genius of Facism Sport” consists of detailed replicas of these gloves.
“Memory Games” is a series of aerial photographs of people playing sports in Foro Italico, a sports complex which was built as Foro Mussolini. The entrance to the complex consists of a monumental walkway with fascist mosaics. Nowadays, the walkway is a popular place among locals for exercise. “Memory Games” captures how these people (inadvertently) interact with their own past in the process.
Postma studied at the BPA// Berlin program for artists (2020), the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (2015) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2011). Recently, he was a research fellow of Villa Romana in Florence and the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (2021). He has had solo exhibitions at EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin; Villa Romana, Florence; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Stadtmuseum Lindau; Moira, Utrecht and P/////AKT, Amsterdam. He took part in group exhibitions internationally: at Kunstverein Braunschweig; ArtVerona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn; PS120, Berlin; Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt am Main a.o. Postma is based in Amsterdam and Berlin.
Xavier Robles de Medina (*Paramaribo, Suriname, 1990) has a research-based art practice. He collects and collages images and texts from digital platforms and physical sources, creating mostly monochromatic works that are both poetic and political. His sensibilities are influenced by observational drawing and an exploration of painting as a three-dimensional object. He questions social and artistic categorizations and explores his origins and Creole identity within the painting tradition.
“Ladywell Palace” is a drawing that he began during the latter half of 2020, while he was still living in London. The work is a composite of several images sourced from Instagram and art historical sources, including a reference to Vermeer's "Girl reading a letter at an open window." Following his move to Germany, the work was put to the side only to be completed in 2023 for the inaugural exhibition at nouveaux deuxdeux.
Returning to the drawing two years, he describes the experience as akin to reconnecting with an old friend or opening old wounds and diving into a mental space that was more frightening, unstable, and unsure. Towards the work’s completion in 2023, he realized that he had developed habits of listening to music and online lectures from 2020, and was somehow consumed with similar mental patterns and thoughts he had when he started the drawing.
The title of the work is a reference to his WhatsApp group with his former roommates in London. Thus, the title also recalls his biography or past, even if the space depicted is not literally his old home in London, or any real space at all. Besides, the title cloaks the work in a veil of irony, as there is nothing opulent about the work’s aesthetics, context, or even the space depicted.
"In the realm of translation" is a bas-relief sculpture, first crafted using plasticine, a material commonly used in animation and visual effects studios. The sculpture is a translation of drawings, which in turn were translations of collages of hair photography. By cutting the advertisements into squares and piecing them together, the artist was able to create fields of flowing hair that form the basis for the consequent drawings and sculptures. The original plasticine sculpture took five months to refine and was finally made into a graphite cast in London in 2018. The use of graphite unifies the piece with Robles de Medina's extensive body of graphite drawings developed between 2014 and 2020. The work is deeply meditative and layered, following the rhetoric of most of Robles de Medina's work.
The work draws inspiration from the canonical essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin. The title of the sculpture itself cites the essay, which explores how the technological advancements of the modern era have affected the creation and consumption of art. The use of graphite in the sculpture unifies it with Robles de Medina's extensive body of graphite drawings developed between 2014 and 2020. The artist's choice of material also reflects Benjamin's ideas on the reproducibility of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay, Benjamin argues that the traditional aura of an artwork, which is the sense of authenticity and uniqueness that comes from seeing it in person, has been replaced by a new kind of aura that is based on its reproducibility.
In this context, Robles de Medina's use of a mass-produced process using a silicone mould and casting techniques speaks to the transformative power of mechanical reproduction. By using this technology to create something entirely unique, the artist challenges our assumptions about what art is and how it should be made. At the same time, the time and craft that went into sculpting the original emphasizes the importance of the handmade, and of slowing down the process of art making.
“Untitled (translation)” (2018) is a drawing made in response to the sculptural work "In the realm of translation". Created on MDF using ink pens, the work is based on a white plaster cast of the sculpture. The artist first photographed the cast and then used the gridded photographic information to create the drawing.
What is particularly interesting about this drawing is how it inverts the traditional hierarchies of classical art. Typically, drawing would precede sculpture or painting, with artists sketching out their ideas and plans before translating them into three-dimensional forms. However, in this case, the drawing is based on a plaster cast of the sculpture, which is itself a translation of drawings and collages. The sculpture is thus a translation of a translation, with the drawing responding to the translated form rather than the original idea.
This inversion of the traditional hierarchy of art-making speaks to the ways in which technology and mechanical reproduction have transformed the creative process. The artist is using photographic information to create a new interpretation of the sculpture that is both original and deeply connected to the original form.
The sculpture "Cult Value" (2019) builds upon the drawing “Rajio Taiso (study)” and creates a three-dimensional translation of the original sculpture of the same name. By covering the sculpture “Rajio Taiso” with saran wrap, the artist alludes to the sfumato technique used in Renaissance painting, blurring the hard lines of the original form and suspending the original sculpture in a metaphorical cloud. This technique also serves to further simplify the forms present in Frans Huys' etchings, which served as the inspiration for “Rajio Taiso (study)”.
The title "Cult Value" is again a reference to Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in which he distinguishes between the “cult value" and “exhibition value" of art. According to Benjamin, the “cult value" of an artwork is its aura of authenticity and uniqueness, which is derived from its connection to tradition and ritual. The "exhibition value," on the other hand, is the value derived from the artwork's ability to be reproduced and disseminated widely.
Robles de Medina's use of saran wrap on the sculpture is a subversion of the traditional notion of cult value, as it creates a reproducible surface that is ephemeral and contingent. As he explains, "the use of saran wrap undermines the notion of a permanent sculpture or an artwork with 'cult value.' The piece is in constant flux, dependent on the viewer's perception”. By creating a work that is open-ended and inviting the viewer’s interpretation, Robles de Medina challenges the idea of the artwork as a static, immutable object.
A graduate of Goldsmiths University London, he works and lives in Berlin, where he is currently part of the BPA// Berlin program for artists. He has received nominations and completed many residency programs. His recent solo exhibitions took place at Art Basel Hong Kong and in Bucharest, his group shows included KW Berlin, the 14th Dakar Biennale, “The Palliative Turn” at Künstlerhaus Bremen (2022), London (2023) and many others. Upcoming show will be held at KW Institute Berlin in 2024.
Ayaka Terajima (*1987, Japan) creates unglazed ceramic sculptures decorated with relief patterns inspired by ancient Japanese pottery and contemporary packaging design. She uses recycled clay and a technique she developed over the past three years to apply patterns and negative spaces of unbranded plastic containers found inside cardboard packaging of everyday products to her figures. Terajima contrasts the handmade aesthetics of ceramics with the throwaway culture of contemporary supermarkets. She explores the transformation processes of both design and materiality in the trajectory of mass-production, as the volatile state of physicality within our mechanized and digitalized society is increasingly determined by logistics. Her work is inspired by the Jōmon pottery, the oldest ceramic vessels in Japan, which used rope and string-like ornaments to depict snakes, universal symbols of rebirth.
“In those days when there was no science or ideology of economy or reason, death was the most important theme and besides the snake, the moon was the absolute symbol of material regeneration. The water within our bodies was considered to be an important substance that creates life, and there is a theory that the origin of this type of earthenware is to store rain (water from the moon) to pray for the rebirth of the deceased at the time of burial”, says Terajima.
She considers this narrative of spiritual rebirth and material regeneration through the contemporary lens of logistics, consumption, and recycling.
Terajima lives and works in Munich. She has pursued her education in ceramic and sculpture courses in Japan and Germany. She obtained her M.F.A degrees in Ceramic course from the Department of Crafts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2014. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich from 2016 to 2023, where she obtained her diploma in the Sculpture class of Nicole Wermers, and also attended the Ceramic and Glass class of Markus Karstieß in 2016-2017.
Terajima has won several awards: In 2022, Frechener Keramikpreis, Gestifteter Preis der RheinEnergie, BKV-Preis 2022 Commendation. In 2020, she was a finalist of Talente 2020. In 2018, she was honored with a Fellowship through the Pola Art Foundation Overseas Research Program Stay in Germany. In 2017, she was granted the Nomura Foundation Arts and Culture Grant. In 2014, Terajima was a finalist in the Open to Art competition by Officine Saffi in Italy. In she participated in several exhibitions in Munich, at Keramion, Frechen; Berlin Art Fair 2022; Produzentengalerie Hamburg; Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein, Munich.
Her work was displayed in other notable exhibitions, at Zentsuji, Kagawa; Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Austria; Pola Museum Annex, Tokyo and many others.
During her diploma exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2023, her work “Doki on the three days” (2022) was acquired by the Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, for their permanent collection.
Maria Trabulo is a visual artist and researcher based in Porto. Her multidisciplinary practice is research based and extends from visual art to the fields of art history, science, technology, and conservation techniques.
Her practice examines notions of remembrance, of personal and collective histories, of community and resistance, as well as the impact that political events have in communities and the role that art and the artist have in politically changing landscapes and how art can have an important impact in diplomacy, particularly in times like the present.
Since 2018, Trabulo has been collaborating with two NGOs to recover more information about artifacts that have disappeared from Syria during the civil war. Working with The Day
After (Istanbul) and the Syrian Heritage Archive Project (Berlin), She helps to convert lo-res digital images of these artifacts into new sculptures, restoring them back into physical form. These modified artifacts are designed to be easily transported in case of emergency. Through this project called "Wake Up the Statues," Trabulo pays tribute to the loss of cultural heritage in Syria while bringing to light the stories and histories embedded in these artifacts.
"The Reinvention of Forgetting" is an artistic project that explores the human ability to forget and remember by linking the destruction of artworks and artifacts in WWII and recent conflicts to issues of status, classification, and restoration. The project involves scanning war-damaged artifacts at Berlin's Bode Museum and questioning their status as art or historical witnesses. Access to photographic memory and documentation of vanished artworks is made possible through Factum Arte, a company that uses cutting-edge reproduction and restoration methods. The resulting 12 photographic scans of WWII surviving artifacts are inkjet-printed on fresh plaster mounted on 12 cement sculptures, creating a new physical form for the semi-destroyed works.
In 2021, Trabulo spent time in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, which was founded in 1884 to showcase the collection of the Portuguese Royal Family. During her time there, she created a new series of works called „Collecting Dust“, which combines physical debris, like dust, wood, and stone, she collected from historical works from the museum archives. Trabulo also developed sculptural works based on graphic shapes found in the museum's first catalog, highlighting the subjective act of selection and presentation of objects. Through „Collecting Dust III“, Trabulo explores the complex histories embedded in both the museum and its artifacts.
Trabulo holds an MFA from the The University of Applied Arts Vienna (AUT), and she previously graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Fine Arts in Porto and the Academy of Fine Arts in Iceland. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of the Arts – Universidade Católica in Porto, Portugal and at Humboldt Universität in Berlin.
In addition to her work as an artist and researcher, Trabulo directed the artist run-space InSpiteOf in Porto, active between 2018-20 focused on the collaboration and exchange between the local artistic scene and artists and curators based in Europe.
In 2023, she holds an International Research Fellowship through the Program of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz at the Bode Museum, Berlin. In 2022 she was nominated for the prestigious Young Artists Award of the EDP Foundation, where the shortlisted nominees will be presented at a group exhibition at MAAT Museum, Lisbon.
Capture Change
22 April- 20 May 2023
Press release
Nouveaux deuxdeux is honored to present its inaugural group show titled “Capture Change”, showcasing various works by four diverse artists, who explore a range of themes through various mediums: Esper Postma, Xavier Robles de Medina, Ayaka Terajima and Maria Trabulo.
Esper Postma’s (*1988, Amsterdam) practice reflects the way that images 'travel' both through time and space, evolve and become reinterpreted depending on the respective context of their manifestation. As a result, they invariably reflect the prevailing opinions, beliefs and fashions of the given time in order to foster and develop them. Reinterpreting images and artefacts ranging from the Middle Ages to contemporary popular culture, his recent installations reveal connections between the politics of representation, past and present.
The bronze sculpture “Genius of Facism Sport” derives from a public statue located in Rome. The statue depicts a naked male from ancient Rome, making the fascist salute. Made by Italo Griselli in 1939, it was originally named Genio del Fascismo. After WWII, the statue was altered in a futile attempt to cover up its fascist origin. The title was changed to Genio dello Sport and the statue was given ancient Roman boxing gloves to wear. “Genius of Facism Sport” consists of detailed replicas of these gloves.
“Memory Games” is a series of aerial photographs of people playing sports in Foro Italico, a sports complex which was built as Foro Mussolini. The entrance to the complex consists of a monumental walkway with fascist mosaics. Nowadays, the walkway is a popular place among locals for exercise. “Memory Games” captures how these people (inadvertently) interact with their own past in the process.
Postma studied at the BPA// Berlin program for artists (2020), the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (2015) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2011). Recently, he was a research fellow of Villa Romana in Florence and the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (2021). He has had solo exhibitions at EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin; Villa Romana, Florence; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; Stadtmuseum Lindau; Moira, Utrecht and P/////AKT, Amsterdam. He took part in group exhibitions internationally: at Kunstverein Braunschweig; ArtVerona; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn; PS120, Berlin; Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK), Frankfurt am Main a.o. Postma is based in Amsterdam and Berlin.
Xavier Robles de Medina (*Paramaribo, Suriname, 1990) has a research-based art practice. He collects and collages images and texts from digital platforms and physical sources, creating mostly monochromatic works that are both poetic and political. His sensibilities are influenced by observational drawing and an exploration of painting as a three-dimensional object. He questions social and artistic categorizations and explores his origins and Creole identity within the painting tradition.
“Ladywell Palace” is a drawing that he began during the latter half of 2020, while he was still living in London. The work is a composite of several images sourced from Instagram and art historical sources, including a reference to Vermeer's "Girl reading a letter at an open window." Following his move to Germany, the work was put to the side only to be completed in 2023 for the inaugural exhibition at nouveaux deuxdeux.
Returning to the drawing two years, he describes the experience as akin to reconnecting with an old friend or opening old wounds and diving into a mental space that was more frightening, unstable, and unsure. Towards the work’s completion in 2023, he realized that he had developed habits of listening to music and online lectures from 2020, and was somehow consumed with similar mental patterns and thoughts he had when he started the drawing.
The title of the work is a reference to his WhatsApp group with his former roommates in London. Thus, the title also recalls his biography or past, even if the space depicted is not literally his old home in London, or any real space at all. Besides, the title cloaks the work in a veil of irony, as there is nothing opulent about the work’s aesthetics, context, or even the space depicted.
"In the realm of translation" is a bas-relief sculpture, first crafted using plasticine, a material commonly used in animation and visual effects studios. The sculpture is a translation of drawings, which in turn were translations of collages of hair photography. By cutting the advertisements into squares and piecing them together, the artist was able to create fields of flowing hair that form the basis for the consequent drawings and sculptures. The original plasticine sculpture took five months to refine and was finally made into a graphite cast in London in 2018. The use of graphite unifies the piece with Robles de Medina's extensive body of graphite drawings developed between 2014 and 2020. The work is deeply meditative and layered, following the rhetoric of most of Robles de Medina's work.
The work draws inspiration from the canonical essay "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin. The title of the sculpture itself cites the essay, which explores how the technological advancements of the modern era have affected the creation and consumption of art. The use of graphite in the sculpture unifies it with Robles de Medina's extensive body of graphite drawings developed between 2014 and 2020. The artist's choice of material also reflects Benjamin's ideas on the reproducibility of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay, Benjamin argues that the traditional aura of an artwork, which is the sense of authenticity and uniqueness that comes from seeing it in person, has been replaced by a new kind of aura that is based on its reproducibility.
In this context, Robles de Medina's use of a mass-produced process using a silicone mould and casting techniques speaks to the transformative power of mechanical reproduction. By using this technology to create something entirely unique, the artist challenges our assumptions about what art is and how it should be made. At the same time, the time and craft that went into sculpting the original emphasizes the importance of the handmade, and of slowing down the process of art making.
“Untitled (translation)” (2018) is a drawing made in response to the sculptural work "In the realm of translation". Created on MDF using ink pens, the work is based on a white plaster cast of the sculpture. The artist first photographed the cast and then used the gridded photographic information to create the drawing.
What is particularly interesting about this drawing is how it inverts the traditional hierarchies of classical art. Typically, drawing would precede sculpture or painting, with artists sketching out their ideas and plans before translating them into three-dimensional forms. However, in this case, the drawing is based on a plaster cast of the sculpture, which is itself a translation of drawings and collages. The sculpture is thus a translation of a translation, with the drawing responding to the translated form rather than the original idea.
This inversion of the traditional hierarchy of art-making speaks to the ways in which technology and mechanical reproduction have transformed the creative process. The artist is using photographic information to create a new interpretation of the sculpture that is both original and deeply connected to the original form.
The sculpture "Cult Value" (2019) builds upon the drawing “Rajio Taiso (study)” and creates a three-dimensional translation of the original sculpture of the same name. By covering the sculpture “Rajio Taiso” with saran wrap, the artist alludes to the sfumato technique used in Renaissance painting, blurring the hard lines of the original form and suspending the original sculpture in a metaphorical cloud. This technique also serves to further simplify the forms present in Frans Huys' etchings, which served as the inspiration for “Rajio Taiso (study)”.
The title "Cult Value" is again a reference to Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in which he distinguishes between the “cult value" and “exhibition value" of art. According to Benjamin, the “cult value" of an artwork is its aura of authenticity and uniqueness, which is derived from its connection to tradition and ritual. The "exhibition value," on the other hand, is the value derived from the artwork's ability to be reproduced and disseminated widely.
Robles de Medina's use of saran wrap on the sculpture is a subversion of the traditional notion of cult value, as it creates a reproducible surface that is ephemeral and contingent. As he explains, "the use of saran wrap undermines the notion of a permanent sculpture or an artwork with 'cult value.' The piece is in constant flux, dependent on the viewer's perception”. By creating a work that is open-ended and inviting the viewer’s interpretation, Robles de Medina challenges the idea of the artwork as a static, immutable object.
A graduate of Goldsmiths University London, he works and lives in Berlin, where he is currently part of the BPA// Berlin program for artists. He has received nominations and completed many residency programs. His recent solo exhibitions took place at Art Basel Hong Kong and in Bucharest, his group shows included KW Berlin, the 14th Dakar Biennale, “The Palliative Turn” at Künstlerhaus Bremen (2022), London (2023) and many others. Upcoming show will be held at KW Institute Berlin in 2024.
Ayaka Terajima (*1987, Japan) creates unglazed ceramic sculptures decorated with relief patterns inspired by ancient Japanese pottery and contemporary packaging design. She uses recycled clay and a technique she developed over the past three years to apply patterns and negative spaces of unbranded plastic containers found inside cardboard packaging of everyday products to her figures. Terajima contrasts the handmade aesthetics of ceramics with the throwaway culture of contemporary supermarkets. She explores the transformation processes of both design and materiality in the trajectory of mass-production, as the volatile state of physicality within our mechanized and digitalized society is increasingly determined by logistics. Her work is inspired by the Jōmon pottery, the oldest ceramic vessels in Japan, which used rope and string-like ornaments to depict snakes, universal symbols of rebirth.
“In those days when there was no science or ideology of economy or reason, death was the most important theme and besides the snake, the moon was the absolute symbol of material regeneration. The water within our bodies was considered to be an important substance that creates life, and there is a theory that the origin of this type of earthenware is to store rain (water from the moon) to pray for the rebirth of the deceased at the time of burial”, says Terajima.
She considers this narrative of spiritual rebirth and material regeneration through the contemporary lens of logistics, consumption, and recycling.
Terajima lives and works in Munich. She has pursued her education in ceramic and sculpture courses in Japan and Germany. She obtained her M.F.A degrees in Ceramic course from the Department of Crafts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2014. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich from 2016 to 2023, where she obtained her diploma in the Sculpture class of Nicole Wermers, and also attended the Ceramic and Glass class of Markus Karstieß in 2016-2017.
Terajima has won several awards: In 2022, Frechener Keramikpreis, Gestifteter Preis der RheinEnergie, BKV-Preis 2022 Commendation. In 2020, she was a finalist of Talente 2020. In 2018, she was honored with a Fellowship through the Pola Art Foundation Overseas Research Program Stay in Germany. In 2017, she was granted the Nomura Foundation Arts and Culture Grant. In 2014, Terajima was a finalist in the Open to Art competition by Officine Saffi in Italy. In she participated in several exhibitions in Munich, at Keramion, Frechen; Berlin Art Fair 2022; Produzentengalerie Hamburg; Bayerischer Kunstgewerbeverein, Munich.
Her work was displayed in other notable exhibitions, at Zentsuji, Kagawa; Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Austria; Pola Museum Annex, Tokyo and many others.
During her diploma exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2023, her work “Doki on the three days” (2022) was acquired by the Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, for their permanent collection.
Maria Trabulo is a visual artist and researcher based in Porto. Her multidisciplinary practice is research based and extends from visual art to the fields of art history, science, technology, and conservation techniques.
Her practice examines notions of remembrance, of personal and collective histories, of community and resistance, as well as the impact that political events have in communities and the role that art and the artist have in politically changing landscapes and how art can have an important impact in diplomacy, particularly in times like the present.
Since 2018, Trabulo has been collaborating with two NGOs to recover more information about artifacts that have disappeared from Syria during the civil war. Working with The Day
After (Istanbul) and the Syrian Heritage Archive Project (Berlin), She helps to convert lo-res digital images of these artifacts into new sculptures, restoring them back into physical form. These modified artifacts are designed to be easily transported in case of emergency. Through this project called "Wake Up the Statues," Trabulo pays tribute to the loss of cultural heritage in Syria while bringing to light the stories and histories embedded in these artifacts.
"The Reinvention of Forgetting" is an artistic project that explores the human ability to forget and remember by linking the destruction of artworks and artifacts in WWII and recent conflicts to issues of status, classification, and restoration. The project involves scanning war-damaged artifacts at Berlin's Bode Museum and questioning their status as art or historical witnesses. Access to photographic memory and documentation of vanished artworks is made possible through Factum Arte, a company that uses cutting-edge reproduction and restoration methods. The resulting 12 photographic scans of WWII surviving artifacts are inkjet-printed on fresh plaster mounted on 12 cement sculptures, creating a new physical form for the semi-destroyed works.
In 2021, Trabulo spent time in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, which was founded in 1884 to showcase the collection of the Portuguese Royal Family. During her time there, she created a new series of works called „Collecting Dust“, which combines physical debris, like dust, wood, and stone, she collected from historical works from the museum archives. Trabulo also developed sculptural works based on graphic shapes found in the museum's first catalog, highlighting the subjective act of selection and presentation of objects. Through „Collecting Dust III“, Trabulo explores the complex histories embedded in both the museum and its artifacts.
Trabulo holds an MFA from the The University of Applied Arts Vienna (AUT), and she previously graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Fine Arts in Porto and the Academy of Fine Arts in Iceland. She is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of the Arts – Universidade Católica in Porto, Portugal and at Humboldt Universität in Berlin.
In addition to her work as an artist and researcher, Trabulo directed the artist run-space InSpiteOf in Porto, active between 2018-20 focused on the collaboration and exchange between the local artistic scene and artists and curators based in Europe.
In 2023, she holds an International Research Fellowship through the Program of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz at the Bode Museum, Berlin. In 2022 she was nominated for the prestigious Young Artists Award of the EDP Foundation, where the shortlisted nominees will be presented at a group exhibition at MAAT Museum, Lisbon.