Abstraction As Representation. La Ville Tentaculaire as a Paradigm of Design Against Nature

In a present dominated by the frenetic proliferation of images – in which the rhythm of visual production and consumption far exceeds the possibility of critical elaboration – the question of the legitimacy of visuality as a cognitive tool arises with increasing urgency. The work of Maria Helena Vieira da Silva – and in particular her persistent questioning of the city, understood not as a recognisable visual object but as a mental and perceptive structure – offers a privileged field of investigation for exploring the critical potential of the graphic sign. The present research is based on the hypothesis that the painting of the artist constitutes a complex constructed visual system, capable of restoring a form of spatial thought akin to that of architecture, but expressed through the language of painting. Vieira da Silva's works do not limit themselves to evoking environments or spatial situations, but operate a veritable construction of space, through optical grids and rhythmic superimpositions that disorient and at the same time guide the vision. The city is never represented according to mimetic codes, but relies on the power of abstraction starting from an internal visual logic, which allows us to unveil the invisible, the implicit, the unspoken of the built space. In her urban grids, there is an awareness that the city does not have to be what it is, but can change and be reformulated. Vieira da Silva's painting does not function as an illustration of an external world, but rather as a generative space in which form becomes thought, and perception becomes a creative act. Her works exemplify how the graphic dimension can still constitute an epistemic platform capable of interrogating architectural space. Her research restores representation to its full theoretical dignity, showing its capacity to generate knowledge, to give form to the inexpressible.