Small archive of frustrations

“Every time a digital nomad arrives in Portugal, 2 dolphins jump out of the ocean to form the shape of a heart.” The phrase, in English, is accompanied by a matching image and is on one of the stickers spread across the walls of Coruchéus – Um Teatro em cada Bairro. They are reproductions of those that Wasted Rita created in 2022 and named like this: I don’t know how to manifest, so passive aggressiveness and cynicism are my favorite forms of living. The title could serve as a summary for her work and for the exhibition that opens this Saturday, which she named works from before hang out with works from now and works from between before and now, in the same room.

On the day that the first anniversary of Coruchéus is celebrated, the doors open, at 4 pm, of this small exhibition where the artist brings together 37 pieces (“some I wouldn’t even call them pieces, they’re just writings that I usually have on the wall of my studio”) and a video. An archive of works created between 2012 and 2024, which she found relevant for this exhibition. Some older ones were left out, especially about interpersonal relationships, which Rita Gomes considered to be no longer “appropriate”, and also “the good pieces, because they were all sold”, she adds, laughing.

In each one, we recognize her characteristic tone, full of sarcasm, irony, nihilism and acidity. As happened in the exhibition at the Underdogs gallery, last year, Wasted Rita once again highlights the housing crisis in Lisbon. “I think it ends up showing the frustration of living in a city with so much real estate speculation. But it happened unintentionally, without me thinking about it. And it’s even funny because here are works from the time when I moved to Lisbon and when I was still enchanted. Apparently, I can never get rid of my acidity!”, she says. “It’s revisiting my process of disenchantment with Lisbon. At the moment, what connects me to the city is just my studio”, she notes, congratulating herself on having a space, which was allocated to her, four years ago, in Complexo Municipal dos Coruchéus, the group of buildings in Alvalade, created in 1970 for visual artists.

From anguish to escapism

misfortune messages was the first piece she chose to exhibit now: two orange billboards, made at the invitation of GAU – Galeria de Arte Urbana almost 10 years ago, for a project that never progressed. They were never shown on this medium, despite being part of her first exhibition, printed on small pieces of paper kept inside plastic balls that were taken out of a machine in exchange for a coin: “Always be yourself unless you want to have some friends, then always be someone else”; “All you need is a nice-loooking ass and a cool pair of sneakers”.

Almost none of the work is new, points out Rita, as she shows the new pieces on Instagram. However, only three of them have been exposed before. The canvas T.I.R.E.D. – “All my friends are tired and underpaid” –, for example, was created this year and widely shared on social networks (at this point, the post has more than 15 thousand likes). The drawing of Gil, mascot of Expo 98, on top of a dolphin, on a neon yellow background, with the phrase “There’s nothing left to romanticize here” was at the AINORI gallery, in Lisbon, in 2023.

In a display case, there are many of the “writings” coming from the walls of her studio. “These are things that I have there because they make me feel saner and that I wanted to bring here”, she says. Some are just drafts of ideas gathered during the creation processes, sheets of various sizes and from several different notebooks, one of them stepped on, others torn – but all with messages that don’t leave us indifferent, always between laughter and bitterness.

From literal anguish to “the desire for escapism and to seek other opportunities and other paths”, Wasted Rita installed in a corner of Coruchéus, painted yellow, a screen where a video of the installation cure my SAD, plays continuously, presented in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, last year. Two sun loungers and two parasols on a piece of sand were the setting for a virtual reality device where you could see another beach with just beach towels and vibrators. Here, we retain the video within the video of a sunset over the sea where a text with existential reflections on dolphins and sperm whales runs. This work, she described at the time, “invites everyone to relax in relation to the present and worry about the future”. To accompany it, a drawing “thinking about good days, at the beach with friends, drinking coconut water”.

‘Do It Yourself’

Always acid, as she recognizes, Rita Gomes turns her frustrations into incentives for creation – from the distress of finding herself homeless in an increasingly gentrified city to the strange realities she sees around her or the comments she hears on the street. In the window of Coruchéus, she displays one of the most caustic pieces: an advertisement in the form of a comic strip that she invented after, in New York, she was followed along the street by a man who, from the car, repeated to her that she should have left her ass at home because it is very distracting and can cause accidents. “That’s what I’m trying to do: transform all these feelings into stimuli”, she concludes.

works from before hang out with works from now and works from between before and now, in the same room is not in a large gallery, like the ones where Wasted Rita’s works were shown, however, that did not inhibit her. “I started in the mode Do It Yourself and in small spaces and now I have accepted to exhibit again in a place that, for me, makes perfect sense to exist”, she says. It’s almost a return to the beginning, but full of baggage, this archive exhibition, which has free entry and can be visited until January 25, 2025, from Tuesday to Saturday, from 1 pm to 7 pm. On December 7th, the artist will also hold a drawing workshop for children aged five to nine, and three guided tours are scheduled by Lénia Loureiro, on November 30th, 21st December and January 11th (everything requires prior booking).