Marco Godinho

Despite its straightforward appearance, Marco Godinho’s work triggers pertinent philosophical and political implications. Godinho asks us to adopt a bustrophedic mode of reading, that is, to go from right to left and then backwards, from left to right. In doing so, the artist uncovers a reflection that starts from the name of the continent we inhabit and expands into a philosophical and political questioning of its fate. Indeed, the artist notes that the inverse of “Europa” is “aporue,” and superimposing an “I” to the “u” results in the word aporia. An aporia is an obstacle that philosophical research faces in the development of thought, and which often becomes part of the very path to knowledge. Godinho then dwells on the many questions that being European raises for us and the many difficulties we face in sharing a common home. Taking up the reflections on the crisis of Europe by French philosopher Étienne Balibar, he reminds us that democracy is also formed through aporia, since the construction of a united Europe is a goal that is both indispensable and still partial in its current forms.