Nácar Performance

Nácar is a performative proposal that reflects on oblivion, the fiction of memories. The name nácar comes from the Arabic word "naqqára," which means drum. Nacre is a hard, iridescent substance rich in limestone, produced by certain mollusks. It coats the inside of various shells and is also released as a reaction to a foreign body that enters the epithelial membrane. This foreign body causes irritation to the animal, leading it to release an isolated secretion for calcification, similar to the inner part of the shell, forming a pearl whose size varies based on the time of resistance to the foreign body and the climatic conditions of the environment. Mother of Pearl is also the substance that represents the thirty-one years of a marriage.
For some time now, I have been reflecting on the fact that I have practically no archives (photographs, videos, drawings) of my childhood. Apart from the physical materials, the stories passed down to me by the people I grew up with are rare and disconnected. This absence of archive has formed in my memory a distant, inventive, and assumption-laden period. Memory is a place of energy, storage, and evocation, often indefinite and constructed through the relationship of real images with desires, conflicts, and projections.
This project is born from the need to celebrate a space and what it represents, to celebrate the irony of what is vague and yet so certain and dazzling. Through the construction and deconstruction of this real and fictional archive, the vigor of places of fragility is enhanced.

Creation and Interpretation: Bruno Senune
Co-Production: Family Film Project

Thanks to Fátima São Simão, Francisca Lopes, Israel Pimenta (galeria Pedra no Rim), Régis Badel

Bruno Senune 

Bruno Senune (born 1992) is a native of Aveiro, Portugal. He began his studies in dance at the Balleteatro Escola Profissional (2008-2011). He has collaborated as an interpreter with several artists, including Tânia Carvalho, Né Barros, Boris Charmatz, Vera Mantero, Flávio Rodrigues, Miguel Bonneville, Francisco Camacho, Carlota Lagido, Joclécio Azevedo, Mariana Tengner Barros, Victor Hugo Pontes, Joana von Mayer Trindade, Margarida Paiva, Mariana Amorim, and Marco da Silva Ferreira.
In 2020, he participated as a performer in the reactivation of Yoko Ono's Instruction Pieces, which were part of the exhibition Yoko Ono: The Learning Garden of Freedom, at Serralves. Since 2015, he has created his own authorial projects and presented them in various contexts: Lonely (2015) in collaboration with Flávio Rodrigues; Malheureux que je Suis (video installation - 2016); Kid As King (2016); a Deriva dos Olhos (2017); prenúncio de uma profunda melancolia (2019); and Vanishing (2024) in collaboration with Beatriz Valentim. He has presented his projects in Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Mexico. In 2016, he received a fellowship from the National Center of Culture. He also develops training projects at Balleteatro Escola Profissional and has been modeling in human figure classes since 2010. Since 2020, he has been involved in practices related to agriculture.