Plans to Build a Boat

Plans to Build a Boat

Jorge da Cruz’s Plans to Build a Boat begins with a small handmade photo album found at a Berlin flea market, dated 1937. Inside are quiet photographs of a family spending weekends by a lake—moments of rest, closeness, and ease. Da Cruz knows nothing about the people in the images, yet their calm atmosphere stands in sharp contrast to the intensity and restlessness of his own life in Berlin. From that distance between two rhythms of living emerges a simple question: if one decided to build a boat in order to leave one place and reach another, without knowledge or experience, what kind of boat would that become?

The work grows from that question. Some drawings and paintings already exist, though the connection between them is still forming. While Da Cruz’s recent practice is largely centred on charcoal drawing, this project also introduces painting, becoming one of the few moments where both mediums meet within the same body of work.

Plans to Build a Boat is therefore not presented as a finished work but as the outline of one: fragments, materials, and attempts gathered around the possibility of departure. The project remains open, shared here while it is still searching for its form.