ANA BORRALHO & JOÃO GALANTE

Ana Borralho (1972.Lagos,Portugal) and João Galante (1968.Luanda, Angola) met each other while they studied visual arts at AR.CO (Lisbon) and worked together regularly in the 20th century nineties as actors/co-creators with the famous portuguese physical theater group Olho in Cacilhas/Almada (near Lisbon).

They have been working together on projects of their own since 2002 on performance art, dance, installation, photography, sound and video art.

Borralho & Galante's frequent adressed themes include:
body / mind, outside / inside, emotion / feeling, me / others, private / public, social / politics, gender / sexual ambiguity, erotic imaginary, self-portrait.

Since 2004 their work has been shown on international festivals in Portugal, France, Spain, Switzerland, Scotland, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Italy, England, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Netherlands, Canada , Iceland, Austria, Greece and Slovenia.

Borralho and Galante are co-founders of the non-musicians band Jimmie Durham and the casaBranca cultural association. They are also artistic directors/curators of the live art festival Verão Azul (Lagos/Portugal), and co-curators of the extinct electronic music festival Electrolegos (Lagos/Portugal).
They live and work in Lisbon and Lagos (Portugal).

"Ana Borralho & João Galante must not only be regarded as a duo of artists, but as an actual couple, an essential feature to understand their work.
A duo implies, or at least, admits a conjugation of forces, while in this couple such conjugation turns into one. It is not purposeless that we never see them performing face to face. The face-to-face of Galante-Borralho stands for a couple facing an audience.
Even in "No Body Never Mind 001", the audience surrounded them; Galante faced half of the audience while Borralho faced the other. Just as in family portraits, they do not look at each other - they look at us.
Here lies one of the reasons why the male and the female elements are simultaneously revealed and inverted in their pieces. The performers do not operate on the field of dichotomy, but concentrate on the unified symbol.
This is not a mask game nor a game of knowing whom is who. The work of Galante-Borralho is not two-in-one, but a unity separated in two bodies. The identification of the one implies the iconography comprehended by the other.
No obverse without reverse."

Rui Catalão, in LAB11 / REAL's program 2005