Original Artworks from the Artist Wasted Rita

These works are included in the Territory exhibition at Armazem Das Artes Alcobaca

The exhibition text for the artist is included below: 

WASTED RITA

Rita Gomes, b. 1988, Portugal
UNSPOKEN TRUTH

Wasted Rita is a Portuguese artist and illustrator. Working across drawing, painting, installation, neon and interventions in public space, she uses written language to give physical form to her internal thoughts.

At their absolute best, her phrases and statements are funny, cynical, anxious, crude, vulnerable and unexpectedly tender, all at once. They feel immediate, like foot-in-mouth thoughts said aloud before they have been edited into something more reasonable, polite or socially acceptable. Rita does not present these statements as gospel or universal truths. They are her thoughts, expressed in her unmistakable voice.

Rita often gives these private thoughts the visual authority of public communication. Billboards, neon signs and large-scale text normally advertise, instruct or persuade, endlessly telling us what to think or do: buy this, eat that, drink me, want more. Rita co-opts these familiar forms but reverses their purpose. Instead of advertising a product, she broadcasts a thought. Instead of telling us what to think, she tells us what she thinks. A billboard can become a confession. A neon sign can become an admission.

And yet, in words so intensely personal, we often recognize ourselves. This is part of the real power of Rita’s work. She does the brave work of saying aloud the funny, uncomfortable, vulnerable or contradictory things we may have thought or felt ourselves, but left unsaid.

This Territory is UNSPOKEN TRUTH.

Throughout Territory, Rita’s work moves between intimate and public forms. Works on paper and canvas retain the immediacy of drawing and handwriting, while neon transforms language into glowing declaration. Her large-scale billboard carries that same direct voice into the architecture of Armazém, using the scale of public communication for something distinctly personal.

Across these different forms, Rita does not speak for everyone. She speaks for herself. She simply has a habit of saying the embarrassing, anxious, inappropriate or brutally honest things the rest of us were trying hard not to say out loud.