De qué casa eres?

Ana Pérez-Quiroga

Cycle "Poetic or Political?", curatorship by João Baeta

[Free Entry]

I am interested in examining a socio-political phenomenon in the history of Spain, in particular, the exile of 2.895 republican children in the Soviet Union due to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The life and experience of these children, for more than 20 years - being that the first children to return to their home country were only able to do it in 1956 - portrays and witnesses several events, such as the invasion of the USSR by the Nazi German army in World War II. 

Among the 2.895 children who were in Russia, two were my mother and my aunt. It is from their reports, memories, songs, and photographs that this project assumes an autobiographical character. 

“Which house are you from?” was the question that the children asked among themselves in order to know which boarding school they had attended. Interestingly, even today, these people share this question with each other. But their situation transcends the simple question and is extensible to the sensitive dimension of belonging to a country - since these children were always seen in Russia as Spanish, and when they returned to Spain, they were known as Russian children. 

This sort of questioning touches any migrant closely and segregates him or her.

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About the artist

Ana Pérez-Quiroga, born in 1960, in Coimbra, Portugal. Visual artist and performer. Lives and works in Lisbon. Her work focuses essentially on installation, objects, photography, and performance art, while her subjects range from everyday life and its mapping to the importance of common objects in the building of the self-portrait and gender issues. 

She graduated in Sculpture from the University of Lisbon School of Fine Arts; with the  Advanced Course in Visual Arts at Ar.Co; holds a Master’s Degree in Intermedia Visual Arts from the University of Évora and a Doctorate in Contemporary Art from the University of Coimbra, College of the Arts. She is a researcher at CHAIA - Center for History of Art and Artistic Research at the University of Évora.

Exhibits regularly since 1999, in solo and group exhibitions, held in national and international institutions.  Her work is present in several institutional collections.

She has attended international residency programs, with grants from Gulbenkian Foundation; Oriente Foundation; Institut français du Portugal - Cité international des Arts;  Criatório - Porto City Hall;  Foundation for Science and Technology. She has an atelier supported by the Lisbon City Council.

Winner of the 2014 Best Visual Arts Exhibition Prize from the Portuguese Society of Authors - SPA.