For his first solo show in Portugal, Vonna-Michell will present two installations from the series Capitol
Complex (2012-ongoing), a work that started in a small town in Punjab, India, and mainly due to an incident
which brought the artist to Chandigarh, and to Le Corbusier ́s Capitol Complex. Built soon after India’s
independence, these massive buildings embodied the dream of Modern India as well as the new values of
democracy. It came to epitomize bureaucracy, the failure of modernist utopia and the post-colonial legacy.
Framed by this architectural project: a slide projection, a slanted glass table with a montage of photographic
prints and text abstracts and a musical composition attempt to present a concurrently fictional and historical
re-reading of modernist architecture and urban planning through the voice of Traveller who navigates and
explores the city by night until he is ‘entranced’ by the Capitol Complex. While the story unfolds sequentially
in the soundtrack, the simultaneous perception of the prints framed within the table and projected images
create other streams of associations.