17 May — 14 Jun 2025 @Galeria Ocupa, Porto

When I Open My Mouth You See The Infinitude Of The Universe, Solo Show by Dear Anushka, Curated by Diogo Ramalho

This is not about fetish. Touching, feeling, it’s about being chosen. It’s about the assurance of never being abandoned. Sculptures that accommodate us, that hold a space to let us project, to perform any theater of our intimacy. The silence allows for the most diverse murmurs in the darkness. It’s about having control, but also allowing vulnerability. About desiring without shame, without fear of suffering or rejection. This is about tenderness.

'When I Open My Mouth You See The Infinitude Of The Universe' is a book and exhibition orchestrated by Diogo Ramalho and Dear Anushka. As a book, it is a repository of everyday objects used to provide pleasure to their users. Through images and multiple possible narratives, it reflects on human desire and loneliness. More than a catalogue, it is a visual essay in the form of an intimate archive that blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. As an exhibition, Dear Anushka’s works represent an honest and poetic search for the ways we try to connect in an increasingly lonely world. Each piece is a fragment, inviting the viewer to construct their own story, to fill in the silences and the gaps. It challenges the boundaries between the private and the public, utility and fantasy, body and object. It is a gaze into the abyss, imbued with tenderness.

Dear Anushka, born in 1981 in Germany and with Russian roots, is a text-based visual artist and poet living in Lisbon. She studied German literature, art, and music before working in various media including newspapers, radio, and theater in Berlin. In her art practice, she breathes life into objects by offering a voice to their untold tales, emotions, and perspectives. She creates installations using objects, sound, video, and photography. She is known for her ongoing project of tagging discarded mattresses on the street. Dear Anushka makes these mattresses her canvas and, with her words spray-painted across them, she releases them from their context of being trash.