Três Moscas, 2012–2024
André Maranha, Francisco Tropa, Jorge Queiroz, Pedro Morais

Bonecos de Santo Aleixo
Centro Dramático de Évora

Três Moscas [three flies] is a work conceived by four artists who have long shared a personal and creative connection: André Maranha (1966), Francisco Tropa (1968), Jorge Queiroz (1966), and Pedro Morais (1944–2018). The project includes a collective installation that features sculptures, paintings, engines, objects, mirrors, light, water, and elements of performance. Thought up as a system of events or simply as a miniature theatrical performance, Três Moscas is a construction strongly inspired by Impressions of Africa, a novel published in 1910 by French writer Raymond Roussel (1877–1933) which had a remarkable influence on art history, particularly on Marcel Duchamp and his seminal work The Large Glass (1915).

In addition to the installation, the project includes the miniature stage of the Bonecos de Santo Aleixo, a relic of a form of popular puppetry in the Alentejo region of Portugal. These figures with identical faces and wide-open eyes that are rudimentarily animated by a rod fixed to their heads embody the figures necessary for the representation of biblically inspired texts passed down through oral tradition, where comic improvisations and burlesque asides are used to establish a direct and duplicate relationship with the audience, based on laughter and catharsis. Throughout the exhibition, actors from the Centro Dramático de Évora (CENDREV) will perform the Auto da Criação do Mundo [story of the creation of the world] in five shows.

Crossing references from popular, literary, and artistic culture, Três Moscas explores the foundational parameters of artistic creation in its relationship with the world and its possible images, but also with the language and theatricality of the work of art.