João Penalva: Kitsune (The Spirit of the Fox), 2001

"Kitsune (O Espírito da Raposa)” (Kitsune (The Spirit of the Fox)), the film by João Penalva, included in the Serralves Collection, presents a fixed shot of a fog-covered mountainous zone in the island of Madeira. The film’s soundtrack is based on a dialogue, written by the artist, between two Japanese elders, in which they refer to the magical powers of metamorphosis that are attributed to foxes in Japanese traditional narratives. What will be the relationship between the fog and the legends of that country? For João Penalva this fog-covered landscape recalls the classic Chinese and Japanese landscape paintings. On the other hand, this atmospheric phenomenon, which produces subtle changes in the landscape, transforms the film into an experiment about the very act of seeing, intensified by the dialogue, in which the two elders, who start to talk after meeting in this misty landscape, refer to a wide array of different phenomena of visual perception.