Welcome to the Wilderness – Intro to the exhibition by Sarah Kilgallon

This is the piece I wrote as curator of the exhibition by the visual and mixed-media artist, and also great friend of mine, Sarah. Welcome to the Wilderness showcased in Lisbon, at the at the Centro de Interpretação de Monsanto between January and March, 2024.

Welcome to Wilderness!

Relax and make yourselves comfortable, as the Artist is suggesting, and “Welcome to
Wilderness”! A strong statement, we have to be prepared. Starting from the very beginning, a
joyful and warming “welcome!”, which sounds so familiar but at the same time it’s almost a
warning to take responsibly into consideration. Think of it. “Welcome to” – does this “to” imply
we are about to go places? Is Wilderness a place, one we can locate with certainty and without
fail, perhaps somewhere on a map, or even a spot we can walk to? Maybe, it can be. But is this
all?

What does “wilderness” really mean to you?

With such a strong statement, in fact, there is more than mere greetings: rather, there’s an
invitation to start a journey along a path which may turn out as rough and primitive as our
consciences can be. Through her multiform vision, the Artist is soliciting us to expand our
awareness far and beyond but also close and within. Split between our instinctual and civilized
selves, we tend to relegate wilderness to (and associate it with) the darkest and most savage part
of nature, or, better: of Nature. We imagine it like a sort of “starving monster”, to use the words
of the Artist, eager to devour those of us who dare to venture through it. Thus we are forgetting,
if not neglecting, our innermost self – gut feelings, intuitions, and subconscious perceptions
included – in favor of the rationale and underlying logic of living according to the Aristotelian
principle that man is a social animal, by nature – how ironic, isn’t it?

As a matter of fact, she is actually prodding us to look at ourselves as if through a mirror, and
follow her in her quest: a journey, as we said.

Wilderness may sound as far and distant as an
ethereal light that we might pointlessly go chase.

This is where the Artist enters the scene and
guides us. Because Wilderness is the light that guides her, she shows us that it is the scale to
compare our selves to the surrounding world, to the universe, the very element which gives us
perspective. In this uncertainty that is life, we should reflect on how much the “dark side” of
Nature is nothing but the “obscurity of [our] own will”. Wilderness is somewhere, there, outside,
but is prominently and primarily here, now, inside us.

Like a modern/contemporary Delphi Oracle, through her Art the Artist is pushing us to leave the
rationale behind and abandon ourselves to the Wilderness:

be it the roughness of the unknown in
the outside world, or the mysterious obscurity of the most unexplored recesses of our souls, we
should equally embrace it, delve into it. We will be blessed by unexpected, almost Joycean
epiphanies, finally getting to know thyselves in a more complete, unabridged, and even surprising
way.

The Artist, Sarah Kilgallon

American-born, Portuguese-by-heart Sarah Kilgallon is a visual, mixed-media Artist who
describes herself as “all about experiences” and interested above all in “the intimacy of the every
day”. Free-lancer writer, photographer, multiform and talented creative, she is proud to present
her “Welcome to Wilderness” project as her first solo exhibition in Lisbon.