Noé Sendas (Brussels, 1972) studied at Ar.Co, in Lisbon, his education also involve periods of study at foreign schools, like the Royal College of Arts, in London and the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as residencies (particular note should be given to the one in the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, in Berlin). Halfway through the nineties he began presenting his work, and the few years have witnessed the blossoming of his career. His participation in several exhibitions, especially in En Garde!, (Culturgest, Porto 2002-03), a solo exhibition with an anthological matrix that allowed an understanding of the artist trajectory and realized a personal inclination previously only indicated.Sendas resorts to different means of expression: video, sculpture, sound, drawing and sound. Explicit and implicit references to artists and literary, cinematic, or musical creations are part of his raw materials. Quotes from Shakespeare and Beckett are present, for example, as well as different movie director’s -Godard among them- and Coltrane. Specific concerns about the reflection and practice of visual arts can also be added to his repertoire. These include: the body, as an entity that is simultaneously theoretical and material; the observer’s perception mechanisms; or the discursive potential of exhibition methods.Sendas’s creative process is rooted in an intellectual device based on an association of materials of different origins. However, the subjacent logic isn’t merely one of appropriation, but the definition of a new authorship. This methodology shares elective affinities with strategies employed by DJs and with a common instrument in current pop music, the sampler, since it configures an appropriation of themes that will be used to construct new sounds rather than an eventual collage.Impulses and hesitations (1997-99) and Claudia (2000) are examples of his video production. Both pieces resort to the manipulation of movie excerpts: Arishitov’s Plunbum, first; and then Fellini’s 8 1/2. In the firs instance, a falling girl appears, neither during the movement where she jumps nor during the moment of the impact, just the trajectory, spinning on her own axis; a sound track constituted by lines from several of Godard’s projects can also be heard, different voices composing a monologue. The feeling of helpless is synonymous with a personal disaster and even death. This interpretation is reinforced by the installation: the sequence repeats itself endlessly through the use of loop; moments of darkness follow moments of the image being projected; as that happens the sound fades away. In the second situation the technical procedure is reduced to the re-editing of a narrative sequence that is projected from back to front in slow motion, muted, but with subtitles. Thus, the possibility of initially recognizing what is seen and later decoding the alteration operated on the sequence is left up to the public. The dialogue between Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale’s loses its original meaning but, under these new circumstances, creates a new meaning where the attention is centered on the female figure. The expressions on her face, capable of translating her expectations and anxieties, are what matters now.Ophelia (1997-2003) is evidence of a recent interest in Shakespeare, in general, and in Hamlet, in particular. The source for this piece is Millais’s Ophelia (1851-52). The painting refers to Shakespeare’s tragedy where one of the characters, Ophelia, is grief-stricken by the fact that Hamlet, her lover, has killed her father and commits suicide. She is depicted in a river, surrounded by flowers, barely above the water level, about to drown. The basis of sendas’s piece is a footage taken by the artist from his apartment window in Chicago. In the film a girl appears to be waiting for someone –her luggage on the floor, incessantly smoking and impatience stamped on her face. The link between the elements results from two actions: the sound track consisting of excerpts of hamlet, pertaining to Ophelia, read by a female voice; and the rotation of the projected image causing the character in Chicago to appear horizontally like the one portrayed by Millais.The artist is prepared to rework his own footage; the video footage from Wanderer (1997-99) portrays a group of homeless people lingering in front of a closed shelter. The characteristics of these men inspired a set of sculptures, one of which title Only silence Remains. A set of figures, of human proportions and urban appearance, are displayed in the exhibition space in a manner that creates uneasy reaction from the museumgoer. The Hyperrealist effect is accentuated by the body features, traced from the artist’s own body, and by the wardrobe: “street-wear” trousers, sweaters, and designer sneakers. Nameless (2000) is, perhaps, the most the most meaningful example because the title presents a clue to the understanding of these works. In fact, the observer faces beings devoid of name, with an absent identity. This interpretation is underlined by the invisibility of the face. The rest is Silence is a clear evidence of the conceptual refinement introduced in these series. Two figures, sitting back to back, separated by a mirror. Two reflections are visible so that one becomes the other. They confront each other by denying each other. Nothing can be heard. Noé Sendas builds a reflection around silence as a state of mind, as Beckett, a master of this attitude, has done before him.