The work of the American Deborah Stratman escapes easy labels. Crossing all kinds of media – from moving image to photography, from sculpture to drawing or installation – her work can be found in the official selection of Rotterdam and Sundance festivals, as well as in the halls of important galleries and museums, such as the MoMA or the Pompidou Centre. Regardless of the chosen output, Stratman's work is concerned, above all, with the ability to question the underlies mundane things, routines and behaviours.

Exploring history, uses, mythologies and patterns imprinted on different kinds of landscape – from the Muslim province of Xinjiang in China, to rural Ireland or suburban California – her work points to the relationships between physical environments and the struggles of power and control that humans operate in the land. More recently, Stratman has also focused on historical narratives about faith, freedom, expansionism and the paranormal.

Alongside to the special focus that the 31st Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival dedicates to her, Deborah Stratman presents at Solar – Cinematic Art Gallery a set of works shown in an exhibition context for the first time in Portugal.

The choice of Deborah Stratman as the focus for the 2023 edition fulfils one of the main purposes of the joint work between Curtas and Solar: on the one hand, that of bridging the territories of Cinema and Visual Arts and, on the other, that of enhancing synergies between the two projects and revealing less known aspects of the work of artists/filmmakers of reference and greater importance on the international scene.

To be seen at Solar from 8 July.