Pedro Barateiro: Mano Manca

The exhibition brings together different series and works produced by Pedro Barateiro over several years, revealing the diversity of his practice across animation, installations, videos, performances, sculpture and drawing. It originates in his research into Vicente Lusitano, a sixteenth-century mixed-race composer whose identity and contribution to European musical tradition have been largely erased from historical narratives. The title refers to the Italian expression for “left hand” and to a term found in a book published by Lusitano in Rome in 1553, which includes a Guidonian hand, a left hand used as a musical notation system. The hand, also understood as the hand that is missing or considered impure, becomes a recurring motif throughout the exhibition. Drawing on popular culture, art, documents and literature, the works combine and transform diverse materials to question Western thought and its individual and collective imaginaries. The exhibition positions artistic expression as a means of critical enquiry into societies and their narratives.