There is a sense of comfort that prevails in Cristina Lama’s drawings, not because they inspire quietness in their observation (although it does exist in absolute terms), but because they are bound to be entertained by our senses. “At home” [“em casa”] is thus made to play with a spectator - one that observes and enters the drawing’s space to find his own points of comfort or conflict. In other words, a pure act of observation of the drawing’s prevailing tones and conducting lines, where the spectator finds a place that comes together with his own senses and recognizes the overwhelming experience of imagining himself in it.

Cristina Lamas’ art invites us to explore the primary function of our gaze, not only because of its silhouettes but also by forms that linger in time such as those we keep in our own memory - like stories or fables that call for a theatre of senses. Its own life persists by favoring traces of strong lines of an almost kinetic ambition, shedding light on an imaginary space - a place where our present (our house) finds an inspiration that comes from the Far East. Like moments of mutual exploration that arise from a certain tension between ways of seeing and storytelling.

That same theatre of senses also endures by the transversal function of our gaze, which is here exposed to a chromatic scale that determines the place where our perception is formed, thus provoking photographic instants. It is a game made of limits and possibilities that does not bind itself inside to its own paths or even the poetry that comes through it. On the other and, it creates circuits, directions or trips that look upon an order of forms not as an end but as a study on the freedom to see and to be seen within the time of our perception, sensibly and elegantly. These are real and imaginary forms that live through the simplicity and delicacy of every detail and colour of Cristina Lamas’ art, like the house to which we dispose our intimacy. Let us then cross these paths that welcome and enrich our own stories and our sense.

Francisco Valente