Collecting pages. Interview with Luiza Teixeira de Freitas

Luiza Teixeira de Freitas is, with Manuel Segade, the curator of the #Opening programme at ARCOmadrid, which is dedicated to young galleries. Together with her father they direct the Teixeira de Freitas Collection that has developed a specific part in artists books, editions and ephemera in parallel to its main works. 

Art & Project Bulletins Box © 20th Century Art Archives, Cambridge, UK

Rosa Lleó: For this interview, I would like to focus specifically on your interest and relation with artist books and editions, so perhaps we can start from the beginning. What was your inspiration and stimulation, and what were your firsts acquisitions for the collection?

Luiza Teixeira de Freitas: I have been working with my father’s collection for nearly 12 years now. He has built a contemporary art collection that for a decade was curated by Adriano Pedrosa and dealt with artworks that directly or indirectly referred to architecture, construction and de-construction. Three years ago the collection shifted to a new focus in books, literature, words and linguistics. The shift was very organic but it had its starting point in the creation of a new collection —independent from the one I just referred— of artist books. It started mainly through a slight nostalgia of what was done in the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s in Conceptual Art, where the concept was at the centre stage of creation. It meant taking a step back from the frenzy of the art world of nowadays, slowing down and understanding a different way of looking at art.