Início » Angolan artist experiences confinement as creative solitude

Angolan artist experiences confinement as creative solitude

Lusa

Dilia Fraguito Samarth is an Angolan plastic artist who has lived in Portugal for decades teaching classes and has experienced confinement due to covid-19 as if they were the lonely days she needs to create a work.

“For me it is not new to be in quarantine. Creation needs a space within us, we need to be alone. I am used to being alone”, he told the Lusa agency.

Despite this familiarity with loneliness, in the house of “Dília”, as she is known, there is no shortage of people, since this room in Setúbal is also a studio where she and her husband, a university professor of Indian origin, retired, teach classes and explanations.

Before this way of living, “Dília” taught in public schools, but dropped out because it did not fit “the social system that was, and is, installed”.

“Like a butterfly”

The fact that the couple worked at home forced “a strict schedule” and, therefore, in the first week without students, he felt “like a butterfly”.

“I didn’t know what to do, I was without students, but I was always waiting for them,” he said.

In the second week of confinement, the artist discovered that she had a home.

“I realized that I could walk barefoot or in a robe and I didn’t need to look like a teacher after 9:30 am”, she said.

But a week later, the couple was faced with a discovery: “We found out that the students are our family”.

“It gave me a pain inside, more to me than to my husband, who is more rational. I am very emotional. I like my students so much, to help them get good grades, to help those who have more problems at school. And when I spoke to them, they said they were missing me too “.

Now, “Dília” says that she lives one day at a time and without major news.

“I have always lived on a tightrope and have always become accustomed to living with only the essentials. This is our logic of life: to depend on the minimum”.

A training that the artist learned in Angola, where the war helped her to put things in perspective.

“Together”

At 63 years old and with three decades in Portugal, he often thinks of those who have nothing, which is “training to respect all the people who live on the planet”.

And he believes that the current pandemic will help to focus people on what really matters.

“This is the time to be more together and to realize that we are indeed brothers,” he said.

The new coronavirus, responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, has already killed more than 100,000 people and infected more than 1.6 million in 193 countries and territories.

Of the cases of infection, more than 335 thousand are considered cured.

After appearing in China in December, the outbreak spread across the world, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic situation.

Contact Us

Generalist media, focusing on the relationship between Portuguese-speaking countries and China.

Plataforma Studio

Newsletter

Subscribe Plataforma Newsletter to keep up with everything!