All Beauty Must Die: Patrícia Almeida in the Serralves Collection

'All Beauty Must Die is a project developed between 2009 and 2011 by the artist, photographer and publisher Patrícia Almeida (Lisbon, 1970–2017) in collaboration with David-Alexandre Guéniot, based on images recorded at music festivals, mainly at Paredes de Coura and at the Ermal Island. Associating youth with the desire to escape and for freedom, this project underlines the power of music as a unifying element capable of generating a collective spirit. Frequently located in idyllic settings, music festivals are genuine space and time capsules: it is as if, for those three or four days, nothing else existed.

The title is a double quotation—from the poem Ode on Melancholy, by John Keats, a nineteenth-century English Romantic poet, and the song Where the Wild Roses Grow, by Nick Cave—reinforcing the tragic and romantic impact of the images. The idea that all beauty dies—or must die—contrasts the strength and beauty of youth, the apogee of life, with its transitory and fragile condition.All Beauty Must Die has previously been displayed in a variety of forms, such as photographs, videos and publications by the artist; here, it is presented as a set of twelve photographs and a video from the Serralves Collection.