Sung Paintings - performances by Daniel V. Melim - DANIEL V. MELIM

DANIEL V. MELIM

Sung Paintings - stage and gallery performances

The Friends of Machico Library, headed by Vatican’s Minister of Education and Culture (Cardinal José Tolentino Mendonça) invited me to do a piece for the entrance of their library in Madeira Island, were I grew up. Emanuel Gaspar was the curator and the artist Miguel Angelo Rocha was also invited to create his own piece for that space. On December 26th, 2022, "the wooden man / o homem de madeira" painting premiered. I did a Sung Painting performance of that painting. This short video of that performance ends with the text quoting a beautiful Fausto Bordalo Dias song called "A guerra é a guerra / War is war". Its refrain reads:

"I jump in the dark
With my teeth I hold the knife
And with my coloured eyes I swear:
Come see the fire in the sea
The fish on fire

Anna, come and see
Oh Anna come and see
Oh Anna come and see"

This painting relates to a centuries old local practice of warning neighboring villages about coming pirates by lighting big piles of wood on the top of hills. Throughout time, Machico being historically a Catholic fishermen area, these fires it merged into a Catholic celebration held in late August. On a specific day at dusk, hand-built large scale images of boats, fishes and Catholic symbols are fire-lit on the big hills surrounding the city. Each burning drawing, made out of oil dipped rag balls mounted on wood and metal structures, is the work of a specific neighborhood. One of those groups is in charge of lighting up with fire an old zigzag path that goes up on of the hills. In the end, they all come running down the slopes to the center of the bay to watch the valley surrounded by burning images and to have a swim in the ocean.

At the XIV International Montemor-o-Novo Puppet Meeting, organized by Alma d'Arame, I made a full concert-performance from the life stories I found when in artist residency with the Sung Paintings project. This performance was fully subtitled in English and had the creative assistance of Maria Petersen and the light design of Nuno Borda d'Água.

Sound performance at the "broken temple, unbreakable spirit" solo show, Monitor Rome Gallery, 2022

Title Text.

The restored temple piece is painted on the back of a small wall closet. It is an oil painting of a nocturne landscape of the Island of Madeira. By employing an approach similar to the Japanese technique of Kintsugi, I embraced the cracks of the wood by painting them in gold. As I sing the painting, I take it as a "score" in the broader sense of the word. I did this performance at my sete estrelo solo show at Monitor Lisbon Gallery.

I did the waiting for ourselves Sung Painting performance in the context of my sete estrelo solo show at Monitor Lisbon Gallery. This work is an oil painting on a large one century old bed headboard. The headboard is made of five different kinds of wood, some of them “exotic”, such as the south-american pau-santo. The models come from an old 19th century madeiran crib made by the illiterate grand-grandfather of Madeiran poet Herberto Helder: a block of tiny wooden carved nativity figures representing eight apostles that get quite big because of the chosen view point. I has access to these figures because a friend of mine was doing the restoration of the piece for a Museum. The sung painting takes the whole of this piece as its “score”: the gestures, the scale, the fact that is was part of a resting place, the catholic heritage in both its painfully colonial and redeeming nuances.