In her acceptance speech for the Helena Vaz da Silva Award at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, 81-year-old artist Maria João Pires expressed her profound gratitude to the award’s organizers and lifelong supporters, stating: “Competition often leads us to forget what is essential, the community, the group, and our profound nature.”
“It makes us forget that human rights are for everyone and that this should never be a matter of doubt or hesitation. Winning, in the sense we usually understand it, is not a solution for the art of living. Winning means wanting to possess, desiring someone to lose in our favor,” said Maria João Pires.
The pianist further remarked that the “unlimited capacity developed by humans throughout history to kill, destroy, annihilate, is truly frightening and inexplicable,” and in a century regarded as the “hope for peace, the century of science, extraordinary technological advances, medicine, and the advent of Artificial Intelligence,” the “unthinkable is happening.”
“We are witnessing simultaneously heinous massacres, the destruction of peoples, of cultures, and, mercilessly, the massacre of the planet. It seems that suddenly we must question, after all, is the human being unintelligent or simply incapable of evolving with the acquired experience? It is somewhat about exploiting, taking, not caring, being indifferent to the Other, rejecting the reality of the group, and common belonging. And losing is being left out,” she stated, addressing an audience that included former minister and Gulbenkian executive administrator Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins and the Minister of Culture, Youth, and Sports, Margarida Balseiro Lopes.
Maria João Pires highlighted that “artistic and creative action presupposes and implies the absence of feelings of conquest, possession, and seduction,” emphasizing that “true art is the activity of non-aggression.”
The pianist Maria João Pires was awarded today the European Helena Vaz da Silva Award for the Promotion of Cultural Heritage.
“This European recognition honors the exceptional contribution of one of the greatest pianists of our time to promoting cultural heritage and European values,” justified the National Center for Culture (CNC) in September during the announcement.
