'Before this White: Distant Echoes' is a site-specific performative drawing perfomed as part of the ‘Performance as Drawing. Drawing as Performance’ programme, curated by José Alberto Ferreira, and included in the international exhibition ‘Studiolo XXI. Drawing and affinities’ curated by Fatima Lambert at the Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, Portugal (2019).

Fundação Eugénio de Almeida formerly was the Portuguese Inquisition Palace of Évora, when it was the capital of the country. The Portuguese Inquisition was a formal system of courts, accusers and dungeons that acted in Portugal and its colonies between 1536 and 1821. Its aim was to pursue non catholic people, to punish catholic dissenters and generally eradicate behaviours and opinions against Catholicism’s ideas. They did this through coercion, torture and censorship, shedding blood of thousands of people.

Hundreds of years later, the dungeon of Évora’s Inquisition Palace has been reconverted in a white-cube exhibition space where there is no trace of its past use. ‘Before this White: Distant Echoes’ is a performative drawing created in response to the historical memory of the exhibition venue, in which M.Lohrum explored sound, gesture, physical action and mark making by using an object with imprisonment connotations related to this past, as an unconventional, liberating, drawing tool.