A co-production of Binaural Nodar, the Municipality of Viseu through the Várzea de Calde Linen Museum and the Calde Parish Council.

The Uruguayan anthropologist Ana Rodríguez has been working with memory, sound and orality in rural contexts, namely through her project Mapa Sonoro de Uruguay (Sound Map of Uruguay), and one of the focuses of her intervention is traditional practices linked to individual and community health and care, which have been transformed over time and still exist in rural areas of countries such as Portugal and Uruguay.

During artistic residencies held in Várzea de Calde (Viseu) and Northern Uruguay in 2020 and 2022, an inquiry was made into these continuities and how they are currently signified by the beneficiaries of these practices. In these processes, which can help restore health, some plants are involved, as well as stories passed down orally over generations of people who have lived or still live in the rural world.

The exhibition “Echoes of the Gift: Practices of care and health in rural areas of Portugal and Uruguay”, to be inaugurated on November 30, brings together written reflections and audio reports selected by Ana Rodríguez and a set of photographs by María Puppo (Uruguay) and Liliana Silva (Portugal) that illustrate the sensory landscapes related to the practices mentioned above.

Following this exhibition, a bilingual book (Portuguese and Spanish) with the same title will be published, bringing together eleven texts by Ana Rodríguez related to her research, as well as photographic and sound essays, giving the publication the status of an expanded book.

Ana Rodríguez was born in Montevideo and has been living and researching in rural contexts since 2001, when she settled in Tacuarembó, in the north of Uruguay. She graduated as an anthropologist from the University of the Republic of Uruguay. She studied for a master’s degree in Theory and Practice of Creative Documentary at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She was part of the teaching team at the Nucleus of Rural Studies (Tacuarembó headquarters of the University of the Republic of Uruguay) and between 2016 and 2018 she created audiovisual teaching materials on gender and rurality for the Faculty of Agronomy of Uruguay (2016), created the Sound Map of Uruguay (2016), and is currently an artist who develops creative projects in Uruguay in Portugal, many of them in partnership with Binaural Nodar (Ecos da Ida e do Retorno, Radioballo, Plantas Faladas, Lecho, etc. etc.).

Liliana Silva is from Santo António, Funchal (Portugal). In 2014 she finished her degree in Fine Arts, Multimedia at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. That same year, she took a Master’s Degree in Multimedia Communication, Interactive Multimedia Branch, at the University of Aveiro, which she completed in 2016. Since August 2017, she has been responsible for the communication and multimedia areas at Binaural Nodar, having developed an intense activity in graphic design, editorial graphics, video recording and editing, exhibition design and assembly, etc. She directed the documentaries “À eira: o centeio que resiste em Campia” (2020). “Templo erguido: a história da igreja nova de São Miguel do Mato” (2022), ‘Rebordinho: Uma aldeia retratada’ (2023) and ‘A valorização dos Baldios de Rebordinho e Malhadouro’ (2024).

María Puppo has a degree in Fine and Visual Arts from the University of the Republic of Uruguay and a master’s degree in Agricultural Sciences, with an option in Plant Sciences, from the same university. She was born in rural Maldonado, the daughter of nursery owners, and is currently a nursery owner of ornamental plants and plants native to the coastal and mountainous region of southern Uruguay. María Puppo is currently a lecturer and researcher on the degree course in Landscape Design, CURE/UDELAR, Maldonado (Uruguay).