Information on the Kennedy Center’s website explains: “Continuing the Kennedy Center’s exploration of international
arts, IBERIAN SUITE: global arts remix is a major festival highlighting the many cultures that comprise the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking peoples—the impact they’ve had throughout the world, and the vast influences they’ve embraced from other cultures.”
Taking place from March 3–24, 2015 and under the guidance of curator Alicia Adams, Vice President of International Programming and Dance, the festival includes dozens of performances by some of the world’s best contemporary music, dance, and theatre artists, many of whom are making their U.S. or D.C. debuts.
Visual arts are highlighted in exhibitions and installations around the building, and additional events focus on literature, film, cuisine and more.
In a statement Alicia Adams adds: “When Spanish and Portuguese explorers and conquistadors set sail in the 15th century, the resulting encounters transformed the world. Global arts remix seeks to capture a sense of the reach of those historic voyages and the extraordinary mingling of arts and cultures they engendered. This festival offers you a chance to experience the culmination of hundreds of years of cultural history.”
The bus campaign promoting the event is the creation of the New York-based Arte Institute, a non-profit organisation that promotes Portuguese culture and showcases art from Portugal.
Founded on April 11, 2011, it describes itself as “a space that offers a creative environment for Portuguese artists in the field of art, literature, music, dance and film.”
Arte Institute is also responsible for part of the festival’s programme and its bus promo material uses shots of features exhibited at the festival by eminent Portuguese creative minds, such as architects Siza Vieira and Souto de Moura, and designer Nuno Vasa.
The bus-side posters include images of a life-size Lisbon tram made of cork by Nuno Vasa on show at the festival, and a stone raft by the afore-mentioned architects also on display at the Kennedy Center.
“For the campaign we used images from the exposition, such as the stone raft and the tram instead of imagery from the country, which would have been a more obvious choice. The idea is to show Portugal as a whole, revealing something of its spirit and to show it is not just a small country and it has ambition”, Ana Ventura Miranda, director of Arte Institute, told Lusa News Agency.
The promotional campaign also adapts the words of acclaimed Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, “O homem é do tamanho do seu sonho”, into English, translating as “Man is the size of his dream”, and José Saramago’s “Sempre chegamos ao sítio aonde nos esperam”, to “In the end, we always arrive at the place where we are expected.”
The posters further push the phrases “Love the culture, love the people, love the country”, and “A country is made by the ones who have the courage to do it.”
Backed by national companies M. Luís Construction, Vista Alegre and Calçada Wines, the campaign will reach four million people during the duration of the festival.