The exhibition piece designed by BUREAU initially takes the form of a booth and gradually increases in size as visitors progress through the exhibition, until it is fully revealed in the final section. The color scheme is not random: gray alludes to the period leading up to April 25th, while red evokes the carnations of the Revolution and symbolizes, within Portuguese culture, values such as energy, unity, and collective strength.
The promise of the elections and the challenges that accompanied their realization constitute some of the central themes of this historical and documentary exhibition. The act of voting is presented as an exercise in equality, free from distinctions related to gender, power, literacy, or economic status. In this sense, the exhibition is conceived as a public space for reflection, information, and debate, celebrating the freedom to understand and discuss both the events of the past and the challenges of the present.
VOTA! by BUREAU. Photograph by Dylan Perrenoud.
Project description by BUREAU
How much is a vote worth?
Perhaps there is no other situation in our lives in which each of us has, exactly and strictly speaking, the same value in society and in a democracy.
Every vote has the same value. In a free vote, there are no distinctions; there is no room for prejudice or social class. There are no limitations based on gender, power, strength, literacy or economic status. This is probably one of the reasons why the act of voting is so special to us, a sentiment shared by the entire team responsible for the exhibition.
Many of us did not live through April 25th 1974, just as we did not experience the inability to vote or to fully exercise civic freedoms in Portugal. The exhibition “There Will Be Elections 1975: the first free elections in Portugal” celebrates the freedom associated with the act of voting in Portugal, from the first free elections held on April 25th 1975. The promise of elections and the difficulties encountered on the path to their realisation are two of the central themes of this exhibition of historical and documentary content. Following the April 1974 Revolution, it was necessary to draft specific legislation, register the population, explain voting procedures, print ballot papers and build voting booths and logistical infrastructure that would enable - as was the case on election day - 92% of registered Portuguese voters to express their political will.
The original design of the first voting booths served as the starting point for the creation of display units intended to house a diverse range of documents and audiovisual content, carefully selected by the curatorial team. The modular "booth", as a display unit, grows throughout the exhibition, until it appears in its entirety in the final section of the exhibition. The colour evolves from grey - associated with the period prior to April 25th 1974 - to red, the colour of the carnations of the Revolution, which is also the colour that, in our imagination, evokes energy, unity and strength.
The exhibition modules are self-contained and portable, allowing for the touring that the content and audiences deserve, so that the message can travel throughout the country. This itinerancy serves as a driving force for the political commitment inherent in culture and in the act of staging exhibitions, especially in this case, where the content itself belongs to the political sphere, within a particularly complex international context. The exhibition itself, as a public space, aims to celebrate our freedom to inform ourselves and discuss issues of the past as well as the present.
