Nicolau - Time of Charcoal

@Igor de Aboim

Time of Charcoal

Boilfest 2025

Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal

It is impossible to forget what happens every summer. This year, 3% of Portugal burned, marking the largest wildfire in the country’s history. Amid countless opinions and debates, it is those who live in these territories who repeatedly endure the anguish of watching the flames consume everything.

Between political and spiritual reflections collected from newspapers and TV reports, we gathered in the Arboretum, one of the areas of the Serralves Foundation with its oldest trees, in Porto. We worked through the grief and anger caused by the fires by drawing with charred wood collected from burned areas, creating a collective web of drawings that gradually spread through the space. The drawing marks points in time — it is time itself. In every stroke, an invitation not to forget. And also an invitation to contemplate the presence of a tree that did not burn, that has endured for decades or centuries, and still remains.

@Igor de Aboim