CATARINA
MY SIGH IS EARTH’S CLOUD
A passage in Saint Augustine allows us to imagine plants offering themselves to human contemplation, as though a gaze guided by love might bring them something akin to redemption. In My Sigh Is Earth’s Cloud, Catarina Gentil approaches this possibility: looking at the plant world not in order to master or represent it, but to allow herself to be altered by its living matter.
The garden is not simply a place of harmony or beauty. It is a field of forces and different times: within it, everything germinates, endures, dries, falls and returns. Each plant holds its own way of passing through light and shadow, its own way of remaining in the world. Here, the earth appears as a source of happiness and wonder, in its strangeness, its otherness and its own life.
In Catarina Gentil’s practice, to keep is not to possess. It is to hold something of the world before it disappears. There is, in this gesture, an attempt at a minimal salvation: preserving what falls, what breaks away, what seemed destined to be lost. Petals, seeds, husks and thorns appear not as fragile fragments of an idealised nature, but as materials marked by time. Each element carries its own force, vulnerability and memory.
In Compasso [Measure], tiny dandelion seeds are placed one by one on beeswax. There is an almost meditative dimension to this gesture of repetition, patience and precision: the hand persists, measures and aligns. Each seed, minute and light, becomes a unit of attention.
In other works, latex appears as a skin-like matter: thin, sensitive and vulnerable to time. It holds impressions and allows light and air to pass through, as though each surface existed between contact and breath. In Tenda [Tent], this skin takes on
the scale of a body we can pass through, but the idea of shelter becomes uncertain: inside, bramble thorns attached one by one turn protection into an ambiguous experience. Even before we pass through it, Agulha [Needle] glints in the distance: on a brass support, a chestnut burr holds dragon’s blood collected in the garden at Casa da Cerca. A red resin born from the tree’s wound, dragon’s blood carries with it an ancient association with protection and healing. Held inside the burr, between roughness and gleam, it preserves this ambiguity: what closes itself in order to protect still holds a capacity for repair.
The exhibition’s title evokes this intimate relation between body and earth. The sigh, almost without matter, meets the density of the earth; the cloud, light and transient, brings air close to what germinates, sustains and holds. Between the smallest gesture and breathing matter, Catarina Gentil leads us towards a form of sensible knowledge. Perhaps the garden is, after all, a place of redemption.
1 Compasso, 2026
Brass, dandelion and bleached beeswax, 300 × 3 × 3 cm
2 Taça, 2026
Latex and lace, 35 × 245 cm
3 Tenda, 2026
Latex, cotton thread and bramble thorns, 260 × 320 × 320 cm
4 Agulha, 2026
Chestnut burr, wool, dragon’s blood and brass, 20 × 8,5 × 9,5 cm
Cláudia Ramos
Almada City Council Mayor and Culture Councilor
Inês de Medeiros
Social Development
Municipal Director
Eduardo Quinta Nova
Culture Department
Director
Rute Moura
Head of the Contemporary Art Centre
Nuno Moura
Curated by Cláudia Ramos
Production and installation
Ana Taipas
Paulo Ramos
Communication
Paula Freire
Administration Support
Carla Novais
Educational Service
Ana Sofia Godinho
Mário Rainha Campos
Sílvia Moreira
Mestre Rogério Ribeiro
Documentation and Research Centre
Ana Margarida Martins
Collection Management
Maria Miguel Cardoso
Botanical Garden
Sónia Francisco
Hugo Ribeiro
Front-of-House
Anabela Almeida
Fernando Simões
Hélder Gonçalves
Júlia Garcia
Tatiana Marques
Victor Borges
Support
Emília Ferreira
Installation support
Divisão de Manutenção de Equipamentos Municipais da CMA
Translation
José Roseira
Graphic design vivóeusébio
Graphic materials production
Original Pixel
CASA DA CERCA
Rua da Cerca, 2800-050 Almada
Т. 212 724 950 casadacerca@cm-almada.pt www.cm-almada.pt/casa-da-cercacentro-de-arte-contemporanea
facebook @festadacasadacerca instagram @casadacerca
OPENING HOURS
From Monday to Sunday. Closed on holidays.
Summer schedule 1 APR – 30 SEP 10:15 am-8:00 pm
Winter schedule 1 OCT – 31 MAR 10:15 am-5:30 pm