Exhibition | NOITE-TEIA, BRANDO SUOR
May 30th to July 24th, 2026
Exhibition view. Photography: Bruno Lopes
GROUP EXHIBITION:
Susana Rocha e Thomas Szott
TEXT:
Constança Pupo Cardoso
“But what happens when we cry in front of others,
when we allow ourselves to be overtaken by an emotion that exposes us directly to others?”
— Georges Didi-Huberman, Such Emotion! What Emotion?
Six works are composed into a nocturne landscape. A silent clarity is felt, which
the weariness of the day solves by night through the obtuse language of the sweat.
We see a body (multiple bodies) allowing itself to be looked at because it chooses
to reveal itself. The more it struggles, the less strength it has. It is at a disadvantage,
cannot keep up with the rapid and endless spasms of thought, instead, vigilant, it
perspires and sheds tears, slowly. All its organs are functioning, yet nothing appears
to move. Sleep is a web, and so is the body when it embraces. The effort is insufficient,
everything comes up to the surface. It happens. Gets emotional. The skin reveals what
remains, what is left of life’s digestion and what, hidden, slowly, reappears, always.
Susana Rocha and Thomas Szott have shared the same workspace for three years. Although separated by walls, it is easy to imagine the many opportunities for interaction offered by a coffee, a spot of sunbathing on the balcony, or a shared curiosity about the creative process that daily life brings together. Today, in this same space, I like to think that the two artists invite us to witness one of these conversations, opening up their work to mutual engagement and our attentive participation. The approach to the idea of conversation, as a desire for connection with others, provides us with a productive path to understanding the affinity both artists find in the pursuit of the sleepless physical and affective sensation, as a possibility for generating new beginnings or liberations. On the other hand, in a conversation, however great the understanding, there are always distinct identities shaped by the contours of their experience. Hence, as in any encounter, questions become paths; and so I ask: * what is the movement of these creations? (do they feel) from the outside in or from the inside out? Both, perhaps. An indiscernible dialectic that recalls the hand that touches and simultaneously touches itself1. Now, there can be no doubt that this encounter is built upon an understanding of a feeling that is simultaneously physical and psychological.Here, we are confronted with different directions, the exploration of which gradually fades through the arrangement of tangible objects and (at times) recognisable, timeless images2. Starting from here, allow me to reflect on Susana and Thomas as they navigate the realms of ‘feeling’ and its transformation into visual expression. To this end, I draw on some observations by the historian Georges Didi-Huberman in his well-known publication/lecture Such emotion! What emotion?
* Looking at the work of these two artists, certain themes become apparent: the body (its representation, its phenomena and sensations) and emotions (as psychological movements and images). Both seem to confront us with a digestion brought to the surface by the act of creating in accordance with the demands of an ‘agitation’ that each holds within themselves. Perhaps, after all, we are witnessing a seminal problem: that of the need for cathartic externalisation, which, though thematically broad and substantially abstract, remains one of the most effective and sensitive ways of experiencing the world. Let us then speak of “state” to describe the tumultuous spirit of the artist who suffers from the contingencies of life and their relationships; “state” as something that precedes understanding, in an impasse regarding the definition of emotions. On this subject, Didi-Huberman shows us that “if emotion is a movement, then it must be an action: something like a gesture that is simultaneously internal and external, for when emotion passes through us, our soul churns, trembles, stirs, and our body does a host of things we did not know it could do”3
* I would therefore like to suggest that this movement, which passes through the body internally and then manifests itself externally, captures the essence of the work presented by these artists. We see a search for a visible form, first as matter and then as image, which positions artistic practice as an exploration of their lived experiences; an attempt to understand and analyse a past experience, in order to transform it into something communicable and capable of helping them to ‘survive’. I propose, on this basis, that we are faced with two artists who reveal themselves to others (and who “converse”) because they need to. Because, without revealing themselves, they cannot grasp the meaning of what they feel. It is in the collective reception (in the experience of those who receive and see) that the evidence of these emotions lies. These artists liberate themselves by placing before them that which dominates them internally; and (we, the spectators), by recognising ourselves in their image-forms, discover (perhaps) something about ourselves4. It is curious how their images remain recognisable and yet their definition remains open to the doubt of interpretation by those who observe them and identify with them.
We do not know whether these bodies are theirs or ours.
[on the visible]
The historian cited above states that “emotions are secretly two-fold” and that “in the same image, the same body and the same gesture, we can find two very different things that nevertheless coexist: mourning (grieving the loss of someone) and desire (longing desperately for someone’s presence)”5. Although these coexistences may take other forms, the example becomes particularly pertinent when we observe the works of Susana and Thomas. Seeking to understand their drift (where they come from and into what images they have been transformed), I imagine them, precisely, as the result of an affective survival that is produced in these two psychic forms of “anything one wishes to attain”. In the works of both artists, one can find a mourning that depicts visions of pain and suffering, yet also hints at a certain seduction, a delight, a possible translation of desire. The line is a subtle one.
So, there is, in fact, something that binds Susana and Thomas together. We see this clearly: the skin, present both in the painted body and in the sculpture; the tears, which crystallise into flowers, flow in the form of sweat (Susana) or words (Thomas); the scars, the marks left by what hurts or by what is ‘engraved’ on the skin, drawing signs of what cannot be forgotten. In both we find stitches; stars, signs that lend themselves to one another. In Susana Rocha, there often seems to be a movement from the body towards meaning; in Thomas Szott, from meaning towards the body. * Susana demonstrates a particular attention to the muscular and elemental vocabulary of the organs and to bodily phenomena. She thinks with matter, bringing it closer to the body’s biochemical condition, and through technical mastery, endowing it with a discursive meaning (Suor, 2026). There is a fragmentation of the body. Each piece seems to encapsulate a specific interest: a phenomenon, a process, a moment. Through a tactile approach, she reduces language to its essentials and allows certain elements to acquire first an imagistic value and then a symbolic one. Her pieces ask us to “touch” them, to draw near. There is something welcoming about them and, at the same time, something aggressive, threatening. They have a sense of skin, of a web that envelops us and to which we tend to return, even if it hurts us. They always leave us with a mark of the encounter (Manto noturno, 2026). * Thomas, for his part,deconstructs his feelings through images that play on recognisable symbolic motifs: hanging (Olhem como eu sofro, 2026), watchful sleep (Vigília, 2026), nudity (protected by the snake biting its own tail; a return). However, the surprise of his pieces lies in the interplay they create. What initially seems to lead us towards a melancholic or tragic imagery ultimately unravels with irony, through text or the ambiguous staging of the figures. His images make us believe in something seemingly obvious but which later proves to be obtuse — whether through the nature of the titles, the intrusion of the word into the image (A hundred and a thousand and a million, 2026) which redirects our gaze, or the bodies that appear dead but are in fact “pretending”, representing their own fatality with a twist. Thomas’s images seem to function as a mask for his vulnerabilities, yet ultimately laugh at themselves. By “rubbing salt into the wound”, they heal with the promise of a fresh start.
[Finally, an relational exercise]]
We explore the work of these two artists through interpretations that have helped us to understand their instinct, thereby identifying two complementary ways of framing the intentions of this exhibition. On the one hand, they guide us towards the artist’s inner relationship with themselves; on the other, they reveal the inseparability of that experience from the reception of others; of those who, observing, embrace the ‘digested force’ of emotions: the creations. I suggest viewing this exhibition as being less about the specific themes each artist addresses and more about the affective and physical movement they provoke. It is about the need to reveal oneself to the other: the process of digesting conflicts, the way in which the body and the “spirit” produce “tears”. Similarly, these works seem to present themselves, too, in a state of tears, of sweat. They break free from the body, rise to the surface of the skin and run down. They display anxieties that become corporeal through mastery of technique and life. Deleuze said that emotion does not say “I” and that it needs the third person to gain intensity6. I believe that, as we look at these works, we will end up saying: “they suffer”, discovering that this suffering may also belong to us. We need only note the coincidence that is Thomas’s piece Olhem como eu sofro.
* This exhibition is, therefore, ultimately an act of crying in front of others. In it, tears (of emotion) or sweat (of digestion) are what remain of a difficult process of sensitive and technical exploration and organisation: that which presents itself as an aesthetic object.
Remembering the verse “to solve the universe within myself ”7, I see in these artists an exercise in exploration hat knows no end.
‘‘Endnotes’
1[the hand] that feels and is at the same time sensitive, as described by Merleau-Ponty in The Eye and the Mind.
2 “(...) images are a kind of crystal in which many things are concentrated, and in particular these ancient gestures, collective
expressions of emotions that run through history.” I recall a text by Georges Didi-Huberman concerning Aby Warburg and his ‘formulas
of pathos’ (Pathosformeln – emotive gestures that have survived over time)
3 G. Didi-Huberman, Que emoção! Que emoção? (Lisboa: KKYM, 2015), p. 25.
4 “He [the artist] frees himself, insofar as he comes face to face with what inhabited him and gnawed at him from within. For
their part, the viewer experiences this beneficial effect, because, insofar as (...) they recognise themselves in it and learn to recognise them-
selves in it (...) where they believe they are unravelling the artist’s secret, they discover their own at the same time.” René Huyghe, O Poder
da Imagem (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2009), p. 12
5 G. Didi-Huberman, Que emoção! Que emoção? (Lisboa: KKYM, 2015), p. 36
5 René Huyghe, O Poder da Imagem (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2009), p. 16
6 “(...) a contemporary philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, took all these descriptions further by saying: ‘emotion does not say “I”. (...)
One is outside oneself. Emotion is not of the order of the self but of the event. (...) there is more intensity in the proposition ‘he (or she)
suffers’ than in the one that says ‘I suffer’. ”G. Didi-Huberman, Que emoção! Que emoção? (Lisboa: KKYM, 2015), p. 29
7 In cross-readings I came across the poems of Maria da Graça Varela Cid
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