N.O.R.W.A.Y. is part of the narrative construction around the German artist Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) presented at the exhibition Smoke Room, Museu Guerra Junqueiro, Porto.

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As a way of bridging the distance, it was common, during Second World War, for military personnel to use acronyms with the names of countries or cities to send intimate messages to loved ones. N.O.R.W.A.Y. uses a similar concealment game to continue the narrative exercise mentioned above, that gave the motto for the exhibition.

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This artist edition takes the form of a letter, and appears as some kind of redemption for the impossibility of sending the postcards shown in the exhibition. At the same time, it attempts to unite in a single object the three projects dedicated to the figure of Kurt Schwitters (A Garden at Night (2020), A Leaf in the Pocket (2022) and Smoke Room (2023)). This new object refers to the previous projects through graphic details, through the images in the stamps, and through a perforation system that requires the receiver to tear off the object in order to access it. In this way, the recurring themes in each of the chapters, such as loss and desire for freedom, are thought under a new approach. Inside the letter, a 24-line prose text (the limit imposed on each letter in the Hutchinson Camp, where Schwitters were exiled), uses the acronym N.O.R.W.A.Y. to explore a constraint game that, at the same time that expands the possibilities of meaning for each letter of that word, it attempts to escape the limitation of non-repetition and dead-ends.

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This artist edition was produced by the Porto Museum, within the scope of the Smoke Room project, presented at the Guerra Junqueiro Museum, Porto.

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The images on the three customized stamps were taken from the mural painting A leaf in the pocket (2022), carried out at Porto Penitentiary Institution (Custóias), Matosinhos, comissioned by the Serralves Foundation, Porto, under the scope of their project “Windows to the World ”.

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The design was made by Tiago Madaleno and uses the Stellage font (Soft Machine, 2020), including the Display and Italic style, as well as the Architype Schwitters (The Foundry, 1997).

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The first edition was published on Arena Ivory Rough 200 gr paper, in June 2023, in a print run of 300 copies.

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If you wish to buy please write to: tiagofmadaleno@gmail.com