NAME: ARQUIVOS PRECÁRIOS DA MEMÓRIA, 2025-2026
LOCATION: Centro de Arte Contemporânea Quinta da Cruz, Viseu, Portugal
DATE: 30.09.2025 -15.01.2026

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part of the series

"Archives of the Living: Painting Endangered Plants and Material Ecologies."

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In Arquivos Precários da Memória, Ruth Mateus-Berr explores the relationship between rare plants, memory, and preservation. Botanical forms become living archives—fragile records of time, place, disappearance, and survival.

The artist’s fascination with rare plant species reflects on the precarious nature of both botanical and human memory: what is rare becomes precious, what is fragile demands care, and what can disappear creates an impulse to preserve.

 

The works transform these ideas into singular objects, situated between specimen and image, nature and memory, documentation and imagination. Each piece becomes a fragment of an incomplete archive—a record of something that cannot be permanently held.

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For the collector, the works function as individual memory objects: unique fragments from an evolving artistic archive, bringing together the beauty of rare botanical forms with a deeper reflection on vulnerability, permanence, and loss.

Arquivos Precários da Memória is ultimately an invitation to collect and preserve a fragment of what is rare, fragile, and passing.