*The term "women" is used here in a broader sense that includes transgender and non-binary femmes, believing that a truly feminist and intersectional history can bring visibility to other bodies and gender expressions that have also been marginalized and oppressed by the patriarchal system.

The writing of history is done, as is often heard, by the "winners": by men, white, cisgender, westerners. And it was largely constructed through visual and linguistic frameworks that occurred under their control and archival impulse, according to narratives that most favored the maintenance of their positions and powers. Through their selective sorting of what constitutes the "History," the gaps are numerous, but perhaps even more abundant are the stories destined for complete invisibility in a history of humanity, and consequently, in a history of art. As Linda Nochlin wrote, in the search for an answer to her question of "why there have been no great women artists" in the history of humanity:

"in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class, and above all, male."

Attempting to address many of these shortcomings, for several decades now, there has been a herculean task of rescuing from oblivion the names, works, and lives of women artists (from various origins, ethnicities, and classes) underway. The myth that echoed from so many mouths was quickly deconstructed: there were (and are) women artists throughout history - they were just shunned, trampled, robbed, and murdered by their male peers. And if this was proven across various artistic media throughout history, video art is no exception - indeed, as we will see later, the moment of its emergence is pivotal for feminist movements that were challenging the prevailing historical dogma.

Epilogue: on rewinding

Although the creation of devices for capturing moving images, and consequently the advent of cinema, dates back to the last decade of the 19th century, the use of video in art is much more recent, having been introduced as an artistic medium somewhere in the 1960s. Names like Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, among many others, are intricately connected to the emergence of this new art form, which has since remained one of the most prolific in terms of production.

Launched in 1967 by Sony, the Portapak was the first portable camera to be mass-marketed, and quickly became essential for artistic video production, especially by women artists. It allowed for self-taught and solitary use, away from film crews predominantly composed of men—factors that greatly contributed to democratizing access to capturing moving images. Simultaneously (and parallel to the development of the artistic field of video art), the second wave of feminism emerged, marked by urgency after centuries of silence and oppression. It aimed to reclaim voices, social spaces, and visibility for women (potentially encompassing other non-hegemonic identities), challenging established social and political hierarchies that relegated them to invisibility. In this context, video became an increasingly revolutionary force, (finally) enabling the creation of both spaces of visibility and control over the ways to make visible — through this medium characterised by its confrontational and immediate nature in engaging with the viewer.

Video, along with performance, became one of the most prolific mediums associated with the feminist art movement. Apart from the lower costs and facilitated access, — both to the video camera in the case of video, and to the body itself in performance and video works that explored the body in some way — these two artistic forms were relatively new, suggesting fields of almost infinite exploration. Above all, due to their short existence and the hegemonic definitions of art history regarding its media, video and performance were not confined and delimited by masculine artistic and theoretical canons.

Emerging as a medium without history or canons, privileged like no other in terms of access and participation, video provided a space for exploration and aesthetic innovation. It also allowed for the creation and appropriation of a new imagistic language that could correspond to a growing feminist consciousness. This new language simultaneously exposed the invisibility of women in all facets of public life (especially in artistic practice); unveiled the media manipulation of television and its role in perpetuating gender stereotypes; and, above all, empowered women to reclaim their bodies (and their representation), their voices, and their rightful place in the social and political spheres.

The Portuguese context, as in other areas, is marked by structural differences in the arts and culture. There were women artists throughout it’s history, but their numbers were scarce until around the mid-20th century. It seems possible to establish a connection between the historical gap in the visual arts in Portugal (before 1970), and the overwhelming levels of visual, written, and cultural illiteracy that plagued the majority of the population (particularly non-wealthy). The enforcement of a “minimal education” by the Regime limited learning to the rehearsed hegemonic history of the country, focusing deeply on narratives that favoured the construction of a national identity. This brings us to the immense difficulty of writing about Portuguese women artists working with moving images before the 21st century.

In Video-Art and Art & Essay Film in Portugal published in 2008, several authors attempted to list all the artists working with the medium in the country. The numbers did not look great: out of 129 artists, 90 (70%) were men, 38 (30%) were women artists. While wanting to believe in the authors' good intentions and acknowledging that the book represented its time, it's important to note that both concerns about gender issues and the visibility of women artists within the field and medium were limited in 2008. So, this text takes on the task of systematizing the contemporary landscape in 2023 and highlighting younger artists who have emerged in Portugal over the past 15 years. It also seems important to emphasize the artists who have been active since 2008 (using the mentioned book as a guiding reference for that time), considering that some names might not have yielded fruitful research, and there seems to be no recurrence of those names in the last decade. This accounts for: writing production surrounding each artist; availability of the works to the public; that these (still) hold some relevance in the current decade; and that they are regularly shown in portuguese institutions.

To establish the starting point of video art in Portugal, let’s consider the work "Roda Lume" (1969) by E. E. Melo e Castro as the first Portuguese video piece. A moving visual poem, it was the natural materialization for Melo e Castro's growing artistic exploration, in his quest for translating "into communicable visual codes, that which is improbable and invisible: communication." Its creation stemmed from an invitation to create an animated poem, extended to him by a friend who was developing a new literature program at RTP (Public Portuguese Television). This invitation was likely a small reflection of what was happening internationally, with state television channels such as the BBC (United Kingdom) or WGBH and KQED (United States) not only showcasing video art in their broadcasts, but also commissioning artists to produce videos for this purpose. It's important to note that after the airing of his program on national television in 1969, Melo e Castro received numerous threats, criticisms, and was even prohibited from "showing his face" on RTP until April 1974.

The bodies of work

Drawing a timeline of moving images produced by Portuguese women, we can rewind to 1975 and the “Revolution” of Ana Hatherly. This video registers various murals and posters related to the April 25th Revolution in Lisbon (Theportuguese Carnation Revolution, on April 25th 1974, toppled down the longest dictatorship in Europe and re-installed democracy in Portugal). It was captured on Super 8 and edited by Hatherly herself in her own kitchen, and it made its way to Venice through the efforts of Ernesto de Sousa. Alongside her acutely aware engagement with the social and political dynamics of her time, Ana Hatherly "inaugurated" in Portugal the possibility of using the filmic device as a political tool, transforming documentary observation into a subversive and challenging act. 

A few years later, Helena Almeida ventured into video for the first time with "Ouve-me" (1979), her only video work until "Untitled" (2010), extending the action and presence of the body from photography to moving images. Using a dark blindfold over her eyes, on which the white words "ouve-me" (listen to me) can be read, Almeida's sensory and semiotic play between word and action continues her exploration of body representation, identity construction, and the performativity of daily life in space. 

It’s important to underline that both artists delved into video but didn't focus exclusively on the medium, instead choosing to develop their works in photography (Helena Almeida), drawing, and painting (Ana Hatherly).

It's only in the early 1980s that a "video artist" emerges in Portugal—a woman who was the only female student in the newly established Video Art course at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto. She was also the sole woman in the videOporto collective: Ção Pestana - worth nothing that there is no mention to the artist in the book on Portuguese Video-Art, which only refers her brother, Silvestre Pestana, who was also part of the same collective. Ção Pestana began using the video camera to document performances but quickly transitioned into experimentation, likely influenced by Ernesto de Sousa and his proximity to Vostell. Although only few of Ção Pestana's works have survived, and are hard to access today, her themes were deeply intertwined with gender issues, systems of oppression, and the power structures lingering from the Estado Novo dictatorship era, reflecting on power dynamics as well as the roles of time and memory in these processes.

From the late 1990s to the first decade of the 21st century, we can observe an explosion of video art in Portugal, likely due to the widespread accessibility of digital cameras, their ease of use, and the facilitation of filming and image processing— a paradigm free from the technical constraints of film and progressively more informed by technological advancements. It's noteworthy that in 1992, a new cutting-edge municipal facility was established in the capital: the Municipal Video Library of Lisbon, whose prerogatives already reflected a desire to democratize access to video, including "artistic and creative aspects," through various public actions aimed at educating perspectives and sensibilities.

In the 21st century, several factors contribute to the ever-increasing accessibility to moving images, which is taking up a larger role in human lives. In 2005, YouTube was born as the first online platform for sharing videos. Simultaneously, mobile phones were gradually transforming into true image (still or moving) recording machines, culminating in a moment where almost everyone around the world carries a camera in their pockets. The impact of this paradigm shift further reinforces the idea of video as a democratized form of artistic or documentary production. In this context, it's important to mention one of the most essential authors and artists in video art and contemporary theorization: Hito Steyerl. In various works, both in video and writing, Steyerl argues that digital technologies, especially mobile phone cameras, have democratized and profoundly transformed the nature of image production and sharing. The author points out both the negative effects, such as state and private surveillance, facilitated population control, fake news, etc., and the positive effects of this exponential accessibility. This includes the popular empowerment of marginalized communities, the transformative effects of sharing and empathy, and the importance of video tools in destabilizing hegemonic representations. The possibilities are inumerous, growing as the memory capacity of mobile phones, special effects, and image editing programs, and gradually expanding the openness of institutions to these new artistic forms.

In 2011, the Curtas Vila do Conde Short Film Festival initiated a project called Cave, later known as SOLAR - Cinematic Art Gallery. This project emerged from a desire for a "contamination between cinema and contemporary art”, and has continued until the present day, inviting artists and commissioning video-based projects. The Festival remains vibrant, exploring the artistic dimension of moving images in its annual programming, both within the Gallery and beyond. In Braga, the European Youth Capital of 2012, gnration was established as a "space for creation, performance, and exhibition in the realm of contemporary music and the relationship between art and technology.”, even hosting the exhibition "A Perspective on Portuguese Video Art" in 2019. More recently in 2022, we witnessed the long-awaited reopening of Batalha - Centro de Cinema, a space dedicated to cinema and moving images. It features special programs and focuses on historical artists, as well as exhibitions and cycles dedicated to video art. These events are always accompanied by knowledge-sharing programs and critical discussions around each occurrence.

During this period spawning the first twenty years of the 21st century, the institutional receptivity to video art's development, combined with the increasing omnipresence of film devices in daily life, created fertile ground for the production of moving images, ever more decentralized from hegemonic bodies. Artists emerged and disappeared, so many engaging with the medium as much as veering towards other artistic expressions. Below, I will highlight some artists, following a chronological orientation of their creations, with the aim to depict the contemporary panorama of 2023 —this will also take in consideration some artists already mentioned in the 2003 context, as well as others whose practices began later.

Susana Mendes Silva, whose video production began around 1997, combines research and archival practice to create works that incorporate historical and political references, all while reconfiguring various social contexts from a personal standpoint (after all, the personal is political). In her video work, the physical body plays a crucial role, with repetition, exhaustion, and the notion of time collapsing into the bodily materiality of identity

Expanding representation to the post-colonial body and its intersectional concerns, it's in the early 2000s that artist Mónica de Miranda starts using video as a tool to explore personal and collective stories. The expansion of filmic time allows her to delve into intricately interwoven narratives of migration processes, submerging into other stories of belonging and re-memorization from the diasporic experience between Europe and Africa.

In the second half of the 2000s, Priscila Fernandes emerges, with a multidisciplinary work (including video) that embodies continuous research on education and play, expanding the relationship between work and leisure in acts of artistic creation and appreciation. Around the same time, Salomé Lamas began exploring the boundaries of para-fiction — fiction created around objects/bodies whose reality and existence are unquestioned — often overlaying multiple layers of reality to blur their boundaries. Lamas achieves this hazy space between reality and fiction through forms of expanded cinema, where characters, figures, places, and images are constructed with equal parts reality and invention. In retrospect, it would be possible to speculate that Salomé Lamas anticipates a future possibility of the convergence of video art and fiction, particularly (as we'll see later) with para-fiction and speculative science fiction.

Unlike historical fiction's fact-based but imagined worlds, in parafiction real and/ or imaginary personages and stories intersect with the world as it is being lived. Post-simulacral, parafictional strategies are oriented less toward the disappearance of the real than toward the pragmatics of trust. Simply put, with various degrees of success, for various durations, and for various purposes, these fictions are experienced as fact.

The para-fiction of the everyday, or the possibility of breaking free from the shackles of patriarchal subjugation within domesticity, is a facet of the narrative experimentation in feminist works (examples include Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Judy Chicago, or Louise Bourgeois). It also forms the basis of the work of Ana Rebordão, an artist from the same "generation" as Lamas or Fernandes. Rebordão multiplies herself through video, in various reflections that redefine realities, set in everyday contexts where the familiar and the unknown collide to materialize that vague space known as dream. These small fictions of restlessness, captured with portable cameras or webcams, unfold through expanded timeframes in familiar settings. Rebordão's works explore the appropriative gaze, the implicit processes of violence associated with the dual act of seeing and being seen, and the resilience implied in the existence of a body that breaks through passivity.

Moving away from fiction and closer to the documentary realm, the work of Filipa César delves into the relationships between history, memory, image, and narrative. Since 2010, César has been engaged in a prolific production centered around historically obscured narratives and events. Her work reveals mechanisms, ideologies, and consequences of archival processes and memory creation within colonization, as well as the possibilities of resistance that emerge through these stories.

Another essential reference is Grada Kilomba, who, in addition to her interdisciplinary practice as a writer, scholar, and visual artist, has been developing video works and video performances to visually explore intersectional issues of power, colonialism, and identity that she also develops through her writing. Combining symbolism, poetic narratives, and bodies in performative states, words hold a prominent place in Kilomba's works as the most potent tool for addressing the wounds of memory and the traumas of de/colonization processes.

Prologue: All that’s left is to imagine a future besides this one

Approaching the 2020s brought about deep uncertainties, but also countless possibilities, regarding the status of the image and the role that video plays in human lives. If, in addition to being a tool for surveillance and control, moving images can also serve as a site of resistance, what narratives and struggles can we still develop within a doomed system that prevents us from envisioning its end? What possibilities can contemporary artistic exploration decode, involving empowered representations, to reclaim lives, narratives, and interconnections, allowing us to dream of more sustainable existences?

Resurrecting a tendency for para-fiction that was latent in the late 2010s, and with the expanding possibilities of the digital as a creative tool, we cannot help but notice a continuity of this narrative form within video art. Approaching ever closer to techno-scientific fictions, informed by intersectional discourses and more-than-human understandings, we can anticipate intriguing times of experimentation in video art — not only with the medium and its tools but also with narratives, identities, archives, and omens — as it gradually flees from capitalist and patriarchal constraints.

The most recent works by Isadora Neves Marques must be mentioned here (early videos have already been highlighted in "Video Arte e Filme de Arte & Ensaio em Portugal"), as they delve into and experiment with various notions of gender and identity. "Becoming a Man in the Middle Ages" (2021) and "Vampires in Space" (2022) hold a special place in this "new" history of Portuguese video art, as they are, to some extent (but not exclusively), the materialization of identity and identification processes with echoes in the reality of people with non-conforming genders. The significance of using the film medium as a pivotal tool in processes of exploration and identity affirmation, where the issue of representation — both personal, in "Becoming a Man..." (where the artist is the main character), and of others in "Vampires in Space" — once again reiterates its essential role in defining the moulds in which non-normative bodies want and can be represented. This might echo back to some initial feminist views on the potential of video for the establishment of forms of self-representation and kin-representation — a revolt against disjointed hegemonic representations that encapsulate and strangle identity processes in assumptions and stereotypes. "Vampires in Space”, the Portuguese contribution to the 2022 Venice Biennale, is a beautifully shot materialisation of this sentiment.The possibility of representation and the right to visibility, based on one's own rules and subjectivities, is amplified in the realm of fiction and parafiction, something that Neves Marques also understands deeply: by materializing an idea of post-gender vampires roaming in space; by speculating that one day technology may allow men to carry a pregnancy; it is in a place where the boundaries between fiction and reality blur that the most daring of experiments can concoct.

Alice dos Reis brings us a keen look at technological progress and the changes it triggers in how we mutually relate to others and the world. In early films like Mood Keep (2018) or Undercurrent (2019), Alice dos Reis opens small windows into science fictions where different animals appropriate (in the first case) or reinterpret (in the second) technological devices for connection and control. Exploring possible intersections between technology, politics, and (more-than-)human connections, speculative fiction challenges existing narratives to weave alternative possibilities of yet-to-be-imagined futures. These fictions have become an increasingly essential tool to imagine the impact of humanity's actions on the earth and its inhabitants, as will be evident in the works of dos Reis, as well as Neves Marques, and other artists.

For a Life Long Disease of Copper (2021) fictionalizes and retells the story of Alice dos Reis' grandmother, who worked in the manufacturing of birth control pills during the 1960s/70s in Portugal. The artistic installation traces complex relationships between birth control, gender, class, extractivism, and technoscience; refracted through video, poems, manipulated images, and Instagram filters, blending to create an almost-too-real fictional reality in which copper extracted from space is used in the production of intra-uterine contraceptives. Her most recent film, See You Later Space Island (2022), once again delves into the realm of speculative fiction, with the Azorean island of Santa Maria transformed into the first European space base, from which rockets and microsatellites depart for space, while imagining the impact of this neo-colonizing structure on the island's inhabitants and land.

Starting in 2019, Diana Policarpo began to explore video more deeply as a form of expression in her work, winning the EDP Novos Artistas award with a spatial installation of video and sound. More recently, her exhibition "Nets of Hyphae" at the Galeria Municipal do Porto received numerous mentions as one of the best European exhibitions of its year. In it, we could watch the videos "The Oracle" and "Bosch’s Garden" (2020), whose themes reflect Policarpo's artistic and investigative interests. The artist's work is preceded by extensive research on a topic usually related to nature and the history of the relationship between humans and more-than-humans (plants, fungi, algae). From this research, a regenerative narrative is developed: just like in the videos mentioned above, where Diana Policarpo unfolds the history of the Ergot fungus found in various plants throughout human history, serve as a prime example. This fungus was known to induce hallucinations and altered psychic states, also being used as an anaesthetic and abortifacient, and it is believed to have triggered health crises in medieval and Renaissance populations. Policarpo weaves the history of the fungus in parallel with the evolution and eventual disappearance of witch-healers, something that is demonstrably linked to patriarchal and proto-capitalist processes of control over women's bodily autonomy and the commodification of the body as a wealth-producing system.

In 2020, multidisciplinary artist Odete expanded her artistic work (previously more performative and musical) to include video, with the video performance "EXCUSE ME MISS THEIR HISTORY WAS ALWAYS A MATTER OF TECHNIQUE." While the interdisciplinary nature of her work makes it difficult to categorize, and video is an area Odete has been approaching more recently, it's worth mentioning the exhibition "FOGO POSTO," co-authored by Odete and Diana Policarpo. In this exhibition, a triptych of films with the same name, blending science fiction and speculative fiction, transports us to a future-past where three characters discuss and reflect on the history of reproductive medicine, the wounds it has marked (and continues to mark) on human bodies throughout history, and how this scientific deception has made it impossible to conceive forms of self-determination and bodily autonomy. 

Establishing an intimate tone in the sharing of personal experiences among three bodies, interspersed with almost kaleidoscopic visions of environments, plants, cells, and purification by fire, the artists return to ancestral knowledge of a previous connection with the earth, a life where the human and botanical were practically inseparable. In addition to intersecting with the works and interests of Policarpo explored earlier, this exhibition owes much to Odete's ongoing work on the visibility and control of trans and non-binary bodies, and the historical relationship they have with nature and the natural. This is achieved through the exploration (fictional or more-or-less true) of the potential of freely available plant materials and chemical compounds in the bodily exploration of gender. These works fit into the expanded field of references and media that Odete works with, based on notions of archaeology and speculative fiction, where the tools that underpin and validate a hegemonic idea of history are manipulated to reinscribe those who have been excluded from it.

the past then becomes a political strategy of inscribing those who are not included in it so that the future can advance beyond the order of things that some have defined as our ancestry.. (Odete)

The research on the bodies of work gathered here led me to notice a trend, like the opening of the filming lens's scope: gradually, the place of representation is shifted to other, less common places; from the human body, from personal subjectivity, we move towards other, more-than-human understandings, other imaginations, and possibilities of life. Coupled with technological development that heralds the end of the world as we know it, this drive to create other futures - and to inhabit them, even if only for the 15 minutes we are absorbed by the film that captivated us in a dark room at the end of the exhibition - propels us forward, towards the unknown that we must dare to imagine.

In a very brief history of video art, we can witness the power of a new form of expression in social and human movements. It was an essential tool in the second wave of feminism in France; the most potent weapon in the liberation movements of Algeria; the embodiment of strength in the anti-racist movements in the United States; it empowered (and rescued) countless stories of women and dissident bodies around the globe. Now, more than ever, it is a tool for creating dreams, parallel realities, and other existences. We are on the verge of a prolific moment in video art, in Portugal and beyond. Perhaps it began earlier, but now it dares to experiment with languages, codes, and symbols that seemed impossible to conceive without the courage to rethink the world and what it would be like if nothing were as it was.