There are objects that disappear before they are seen. A twisted wire, a loose cord, a piece of thread abandoned on the ground. It was during her walks through Porto, collecting these fragments, that Guga Szabzon began the research presented in Elogio ao fio (translates to ‘Eulogy to the thread’).

In the studio, the artist began organising the threads she had found by colour, shape and size, as if building a bestiary. Faced with this cataloguing, she chose some of them to pay homage to, imagining that she could make a work for each thread. What once seemed insignificant began to reveal an unexpected beauty.

This gesture also transformed her way of looking at the city. The encounters with these fragments came to mark her routes, as if her paths were being mapped by the objects she found. A city that is read through the ground, through what has been left behind.

In Elogio ao fio, the artist turns her attention to what was despised, discovering new possibilities in the forms and movements of these small objects. “Elogio ao fio is, for me, a way of re-inhabiting what had been despised, revealing its most unexpected virtues,” says Guga.