É isto

ISTO invited me to create an installation for their new shop in Porto. I set the Hunchback Society the challenge of producing a series of “talking plates”, each one built around a single Portuguese word: isto — “this”.

The starting point was the proverbs and everyday expressions in which the word appears — some found through research, others overheard and noted down in the street by Cláudia Santos. Each expression became a plate, in blue and white, where the phrase is paired with a drawing of the object that gives it form: an apple for isto é bom (“this is good”), a boot for eu não sei a volta que isto deu (“I’ve no idea how this turned out”), a telephone for isto é um diz que disse (“this is hearsay”).

Gathered on the wall, the plates form a small portrait of everyday speech — wry, affectionate, layered with double meaning. A short word that, repeated twenty-two times, manages to say almost everything.