Imagined to be a public monument that payed homage to the amateur performer, this gazebo is connected with an event:

in 1982, the opera diva Natália de Andrade, public known by her tuning difficulties, was invited to sing in the Portuguese television show Passeio dos Alegres, in RTP. In the middle of her performance, a rain of rose petals, that should crown her  at the end, starts falling over her head. This production error transformed the performance into a tragicomic spectacle - in the spotlight, there was the singer struggling between the attempt to project her voice and the need to avoid the petals to fall inside her mouth.

   The project's premise, that was initially intended to be an homage gesture to the singer, with the title Dedicated to Natália de Andrade, came from thinking how to transform that rain of petals from a ridiculous phenomenon into a cathartic symbol, how to transform a laughable moment into the center of a community celebration. In that sense, the gazebo appears to the project as the ideal stage, to act as the bridge between that original event and the amateur performer. Having Natália de Andrade voice as the center of the project, a musical score of her voice was used as a map to cut in the ceiling of the gazebo several petal shaped holes. Through the incidence of sun light, the gazebo recovers metaphorically the original presence of the rain of petals, making the voice of the singer a kind of blessing for the potential amateur singers. The project ends in a street performance where the itinerant gazebo visits several regions in Portugal to invite amateur singers to perform inside its structure. 

   Portugal Tour in a Gazebo focus upon the idealization, construction and public intervention of that gazebo. Through various phases, the project suffers many metamorphoses thanks to the contribution of several mediums: from the idealization of the architectonic structure, to the speculation around symbols from Natália de Andrade's life, to the industrial production of the gazebo, to the execution of the perfomative event, to the installation of the project in different exhibition contexts.

   Portugal Tour in a Gazebo reflects upon the relation between monument and public space; on technic and manual labor, using the reflection on the depreciation of the ornament and the kitsch as a central element in the research; and on the use of translation and contamination between several medium - as painting, as drawing, as photography, as performance, as architecture, as typography and text - as a narrative tool. 

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This project was supported by Artworks and Appleton - Cultural Association.