The collective exhibition 'Material Evidence', on display at the Serralves Museum, presents a set of works by the artist Nour Mobarak, in which stands out 'Locus/Lacuna' (2025), an installation consisting of a sound composition that accompanies a large carpet of 7 x 7 m, woven by hand in Beiriz, Portugal, following her instructions. Reading the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, we realize this installation evokes a personal memory of the artist, namely a visit, when she was fifteen, to an old movie theatre converted into an evangelical church. The goal was to cure her father of a neurological disease, which the aunt who took her to the religious session believed to be the work of Satan. The visual locus of this memory is the red plush seat which can be seen in the centre of the large carpet that covers the floor of the room and invites visitors to walk around the space, discovering the sound that is revealed as they listen under isolated columns of targeted audio. These separated tracks play variations in the same memory, thereby broadcasting the lacunas, or gaps, of recollection. By making a personal memory public, the recording being heard, which underwent multiple processes of manipulation, become an exercise in control and detachment for the artist. '[..] Mobarak's intervention in the process of mediation showcases how we constantly manipulate our memories, consciously or unconsciously.' According to Philippe Vergne, the curator of 'Material Evidence, 'The work is based on a layer of material transformations involving family memories, a religious experience, the specific location of a movie theatre, the painting of a theatre armchair, and Frances A. Yates book 'The Art of Memory', and the antic Greek memory-building methodology of associating places and images in the mind.'

For "The Museum as Performance," the artist will activate this installation of 9 hyper-directional speakers through a performance in which she uses her manipulated voice to call to question the position, both subjective and physical, of the audience member within a sound composition, and in the recounting of a memory. Spectators, invited to sit on the large carpet and prevented from hearing the full range of sounds, will have to work on connecting what they hear within the gaps they fill, in a process that is, after all, the workings of the 'art of memory'.