Brussels, Jan. 5, 2021 (Lusa) - The headquarters of the Council of the European Union in Brussels will be decorated with contemporary Portuguese art in the first half of 2021 and there will be several spaces with a strong humanist and environmental component, which seek to inspire decision-making.

On the day when the fourth Portuguese presidency of the Council of the EU kicks off in Lisbon, the two buildings used as the headquarters of the Council - the Justus Lipsus building and the recent Europa bulding, which are interconnected - have been fully redecoration, with the sober settings of the German Presidency giving way to Portuguese design, in a synergy between tradition and modernity.

Supervising the complex process of installation of the works - which will take several days - the director of Lisbon's Museum of Design and Fashion (MUDE), Bárbara Coutinho, explained to Lusa that there will be four spaces in the two buildings, which aim to meet different objectives.

The first, she pointed out, is to "humanize the different places, privileging pieces in natural materials, in order to bring inside these places - places for meetings, of passage, - a perspective of the importance of nature, of the direct relationship between man and nature" and with a strong "environmental and ecological awareness".

Secondly, she continued, there was the concern to "display pieces that demonstrate this environmental awareness and the importance that design has for the transformation of mentalities, culture and our way of looking at the relationship with everyday things, that is, the social impact of design more and more as a fundamental discipline of the 21st century".

Thirdly, and since it is the Portuguese presidency, "to display pieces, artists, brands that have been working for the renewal of traditional sectors of production, presenting pieces from various sectors, such as wood, glass, ceramics, tiles, cork", all of them presenting "as a common denominator the fact that they associate the arts and workshop knowledge with the potential of new technologies, in objects that also seek to present and propose new ways of being, of meeting, of creativity".

There will be a collective work in the Justus Lipsus main hall, where 20 artists representing contemporary and urban Portuguese art will take part, among renowned names, such as Vhils - curator of the exhibition - and "promising" young people, underlining the Portuguese presidency that this installation symbolises the European ideals of cooperation, solidarity and diversity, but also "a green Europe", as the materials are entirely recycled.

"We counted on the help of several Portuguese companies, brands and designers, who are here with MUDE and the Portuguese presidency, trying to humanize, bring the identity of Portugal, which is also so important in Europe and so universalist, in environments that really want to be more humanised, closer to all citizens and where people - and this is a great will that we have - feel good, more comfortable and more able to take decisions with creativity and with the seriousness that we all need", Coutinho said.

The director of MUDE revealed that the idea is to create "three great themes": multiculturalism, characteristic of Portugal and also of Europe; a reformulation of the interiors, breaking with a very hierarchical and segregated vision of work relations and which is transposed to more collaborative, more participatory processes, in the image of what is happening today transversally in working environments; and, finally, the idea of cafés.

According to Coutinho, it is about "evoking cafés, not only cafés in Portugal, but cafés that exists in big cities all over Europe and the world, but, in the case of Europe, cafés as a meeting place, for debates, for ideas, for sharing ideas".

"As a general note, what everyone will be able to become more aware of - those who can visit these places - is the creative potential that exists, and that exists with another conscience. With an environmental awareness, which is very visible, for example, in the work of Bordalo II, or in a more collaborative and participative sense, with a work that Vhils will present, in collaboration with several other artists, in its great majority of different forms of communication", she said, concluding that the results are "very diverse, very plural, very rich".

The director of MUDE acknowledged that working during the Covid-19 pandemic "is difficult for everyone", but "even more so" when "working in culture, when culture is, in fact, people-oriented, and culture lives, like education, of communication with people". For example, she pointed out that "the number of people in that café" recreated in this show "had to be reduced". And it is a mystery how many will have the privilege of wandering the Council corridors, which, like the other European institutions, has limited access to its premises.

"But in spite of everything, and perhaps for this very reason, I have decided to keep this idea of a café as an ideal, because it is an ideal of encounter, and we really need to reinterpret it, because many of Europe's historic cafés today have often lost or reduced the role they once had as places of revolution. Because they were indeed places of revolution - of various revolutions, not only political ones but also cultural revolutions, artistic revolutions", she added.

And so, even with the pandemic threatening to largely condition Portugal's six months at the helm of the EU, the Council will have "this evocation of a café, which ends up being a metaphor not only of the physical café, but of what cafés have always symbolised in cultural and human terms".

ACC/ADB // ADB.

Lusa