Co-sponsored by European Union Center of Excellence and Department of Spanish & Portuguese
For any question contact Professor Ellen Sapega at ewsapega@wisc.edu
Talk moderator: Professor Ellen Sapega
After the film screening, there will be a talk with Dr. Ana Pérez-Quiroga.
Ana Pérez-Quiroga holds a PhD in Contemporary Arts from the University of Coimbra and an MA in Visual Arts and Inter-media from the University of Évora. She also received an undergraduate degree in Sculpture College of Fine Arts (Faculdade de Belas Artes) of the University of Lisbon. She is currently a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Évora’s Center for Art History and Artistic Research.
Dr. Pérez-Quiroga’s works have been exhibited widely in Portugal at a variety of galleries and museums that include the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon, the Museum of Art & Crafts (MAP, Lisbon), the Casa-Atelier Vieira da Silva, (Lisbon) and the Madeira Museum of Contemporary Art (MUDAS). Her work has also been featured in university galleries at the Catholic University of Lisbon and the University of Coimbra, the municipal galleries of Loures, and the Lisbon Municipal Photography Archive. Since 2016, she has organized a series of exhibitions and performances in which she reflects on the experiences and memories of the 2,895 Spanish children who were sent to the USSR by supporters of Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Two of these children were Dr. Pérez-Quiroga’s mother and aunt; they would remain in the Soviet Union until the 1950s, returning to Spain only after prolonged diplomatic negotiations between the Franco regime in Spain and post-Stalinist Russia.
In her work, under the title ¿De qué casa eres? Dr. Pérez-Quiroga weaves together her mother’s reports, memories, songs and photographs. The question “Which house are you from?” was asked by these children to know which boarding school they were assigned to during the first years they were in the Soviet Union. Dr. Pérez-Quiroga has recently completed a documentary film with this title that brings the materials she collected and produced for her exhibits together with conversations with her mother, Angelita Pérez, who lived from the age of 4 to 24 in boarding schools in Russia. Now in her 90s, Angelita Pérez has lived in Portugal since the late 1950s.