A DONKEY TALE
An artistic investigation by Luís Costa
May and June 2025
Castro Daire (Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal) and Villalcampo (Zamora, Spain)
At the crossroads between ethnography and poetic construction, “A Donkey’s Tale” proposes an imaginary encounter between two donkeys—one from the mountainous region of Viseu Dão Lafões, in Portugal, and the other from the Castilian plains of Zamora, in Spain. Separated by geographical borders but united by an ancestral silent wisdom, these two non-human characters inhabit landscapes shaped by the discreet but persistent presence of donkeys: animals historically relegated to the margins but central to the fabric of rural life on both sides of the border.
The work questions how animals perceive their territories—not as property or dominion, but as an extension of their bodies, memory, and sensory experience in motion. “A donkey tale” also evokes the tragic nobility of Baltazar, the martyred donkey in Robert Bresson’s film ‘Au hasard Balthazar,’ where animal innocence endures the suffering inflicted by humans with silent dignity. It also echoes the lyrical tenderness of Platero, the silver donkey in “Platero y yo” by Juan Ramón Jiménez, companion to a narrator who sees in his docility a kind of mirror of the rural Andalusian soul.
A donkey tale is a tentative ode to radical otherness and the possibility of communication between animals and between places—an invitation to think about the world from the oblique and attentive gaze of those who move slowly, listen to the wind, and inscribe their memory in the very paths they tread.
“Um conto asinino” is produced by Binaural Nodar and is also part of the author’s doctoral research carried out at the ID+ (University of Aveiro) and LiDA (ESAD, Caldas da Rainha) research centers. The project also has the collaboration of AEPGA – Association for the Study and Protection of Donkeys, and is part of the artistic creations of the Rede Tramontana project, co-financed by the Creative Europe program.
Binaural Nodar is a organization supported by the Portuguese Republic – Culture | Directorate-General for the Arts.