"Vi um no DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, em 2018, de uma companhia norueguesa (Carte Blanche), de Bergen, em que os bailarinos passavam duas horas a girar sobre si próprios. Foi algo catártico para mim porque estava a sentir o meu corpo também a girar. Foi durante imenso tempo, a sala estava completamente cheia. E eu estava a pensar como é que nós, espectadores/as, estando sentados e passivos, podemos viver algo tão catártico. Apesar de o corpo estar parado, também estávamos a rodopiar com os bailarinos."
Entrevista Teatro Municipal do Porto, Dezembro 2022 , Coleção de Espectador_s

“The conversation was so deep. It was so fast that we went into the big questions around intimacy—”What is intimacy? What is a home?”Afterwards I decided, “Okay, I have to go to a second stranger’s house.” It was the second one that asked me to lay in his bed watching a film, while he photographed me. He asked me to watch Stranger than Paradise because it was his ex-girlfriend’s favorite film. As I was watching the film, the favorite film of a stranger, I was wondering what it meant—was this his artistic project now? Am I taking her place?”

On working with people as your medium by T. Cole Rachel, The Creative Independent | EUA, dezembro 2018 (EUA)- COLLECTION OF LOVERS

“If everything you see, read or hear about her seems fictional, there is no right or wrong, truth or lie. From her collections remain the accumulation, the journey, the numbers and proper names, the things, the me and you, time crystallised to infinity and a network of people who, however much she shares, will live with her and only her forever and ever.”

“In Raquel André's world, everything remains open, like something that is not yet over. A learning and a book of pleasures. The most romantic photos that the encounters themselves bring out, skin to skin, flashes of an initiatory intensity, small mirrors of the intensity that she looked after on the other side of the World. Pictures with secrets, desire, baths, hugs and conversations. Laughs, cries and shared meals. Rio. Rio de Janeiro”

Rio de Amantes, Vice Portugal por António Pedro Lopes – agosto 2017 (PORTUGAL)- COLLECTION OF PEOPLE

"Raquel André has been collecting lovers for seven years. Or rather, for seven years she has been collecting stories of intimacy resulting from encounters she has had with people all over the world. Each time, she waits in a flat for someone who will arrive, and whose name, age and gender she doesn't know."

Público por Gonçalo Frota, 5 Novembro 2021 (Portugal) - EXHIBITION OF LOVERS

"The piece is of a profound delicacy about herself and its lovers. And it offers a poetic breath about the human that escapes us daily. Raquel André takes us to the sublime without having to go beyond ourselves.”

Antro Positivo por Ruy Filho, Novembro 2015, 54-57 (BRAZIL)- COLLECTION OF LOVERS

"From Raquel's collection spring reflections regarding collectionism itself and, by extension, about life itself. What, how and why do we collect? Do we collect even without knowing it? The set of people with whom we relate, for example, is it a collection? To complete a collection, if this is possible, is it also to decree its death, since a collection would only be alive in the measure in which one is collecting? Is it possible to collect things that are impossible to keep, like a date? Admitting that it is, how to record and catalogue it?"

O Espectador Privilegiado por Rafael Teixeira, abril 2016 (BRASIL)- COLLECTION OF LOVERS

"When I went to do my master's in Rio de Janeiro and decided as a research object Collecting in the Performing Arts I thought: until now I have been working with existing collections, what would it be like if I created my own? I've never had collections, so I started researching on collectionism and studying what a collection actually is. What it means, and I realised it's much more about what's not there. It focuses more on the memory that's around it than the objects themselves. And that's when I decided to start creating my own collection and to understand what I'm interested in keeping. That's how I reached people, and the encounter with them. It's false in the sense that there's a programme..."

NOISERV à conversa com Raquel, Umbigo - Novembro 2017 (PORTUGAL)- COLLECTION OF LOVERS

"Post-dramatic theatre, documentary, biodrama - liminal territories between reality and fiction that abound in this FIBA - Collection of lovers is a performative conference where the artist tells the public, with many photos and some souvenirs, about her intimate experience with that multiplied other who opened the door to her. The artist appropriated the word "collection" to gather bits and pieces of life, ephemeral, elusive, unique. How to do, in fleeting times, not to let the unrepeatable escape?"

FIBA: conferencia acerca de la intimidad, LA Nación | Argentina, fevereiro 2019 (ARGENTINA)- COLLECTION OF LOVERS

"One after the other, the performances seen make up a dense web of ideas and stimuli, a journey full of stories and visions.
It is the encounter - physical, verbal, emotional - at the centre of "Collection of lovers" by Raquel André, a 33-year-old Portuguese actress and director. A "collector of rare things", as she defines herself, André brings to the stage, through images and storytelling, more than 230 encounters made until May 2019, in every part of the world, for a travelling project that will last ten years, from 2014 to 2024, and that had one of its intermediate stages at Drodesera."

Tra incontri e solitudini ipernatural, KLP Teatro | Itália, 20 agosto 2019 - COLLECTION OF LOVERS

"Collecting, she says, is a way of building ourselves, of looking at ourselves. "Having a collection is almost a way of organising your biography, a way of seeing yourself, of looking at yourself. Or to condense, to store some lack of something you couldn't achieve, experience or even verbalise that you suddenly put there, in that object. It's a way of organising the world. What I find interesting as an artist is to be able to create narratives, stories, a mirror for society from the space that exists between one thing and another. I started to realise that what interested me was the space of what wasn't there and that this is a methodology of creation for various artists."

Colecionadora de nada Guardadora de tudo, Jornal i - novembro 2017 (PORTUGAL)- COLLECTION OF COLLECTORS

"But let's get to the method. If Lotte van den Berg's proposal in her shows is to create spaces in which the spectator becomes an active part of the performative show, a show often created on the spot, it is through this that Raquel André keeps it in one of all the ways it is possible to imagine to keep, as a collector of objects keeps, either the practice, the method or the work of this group of artists."

Colecção de Artistas. O corpo de Raquel André é um arquivo, Jornal i, 18 setembro 2019 (portugal)- COLLECTION OF ARTISTS

"Raquel André is the artist chosen to promote the celebration of the European Day of Spectators", reads the statement of the cultural cooperation project, which involves 17 Portuguese municipalities. The performer presented, together with Artemrede, the winning artistic proposal, which will result in an event, on November 21, in a digital environment."

Raquel André seleccionada para a celebração do Dia Europeu do Espectador, Público - Junho 2020 (portugal)- COLLECTION OF SPECTATORS

"You become more vulnerable, then you also become much more positive, because you realise the vulnerability of life. Your existence is not that important", Raquel André

Sozinho num quarto não existes, Gerador - novembro 2017 (PORTUGAL) - COLLECTION OF COLLECTORS

"This time, Raquel André does not rely on video or photography to document the encounters. It will be the body - her body - that will register this memory of another stage of her collection. For those who still don't know her, this actress collects people. The same as memories, paths, ways of being."

Corpo de Artista, Jornal de Negócios, 21 setembro 2019 (portugal)- COLLECTION OF ARTISTS

"The online event European Spectators' Day will take place on collectionofspectators.com and on the Facebook page of the Ljubljana Dance Theatre at 17:00, bringing together male and female spectators from fifteen European countries."

Tedenski napovednik kulturnih dogodkov, Mladina | Eslovénia, 16 novembro 2020 (eslovénia)- COLEÇÃO DE ESPECTADOR_S

"Until September 29th at Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, in Lisbon, Raquel André takes her Artist Collection on stage. Or how she tries to register in her body the works of others?"

“Raquel André colecciona os outros para agarrar a efemeridade”, Público por Gonçalo Frota, Setembro 2019 (portugal)- COLLECTION OF ARTISTS

"In a house, of typology T1, designed by architect and set designer José Capela, challenged in 2018 by Raquel to design this project together, viewers will be guided on a tour along which they will be able to see images captured over seven years, in 13 countries, in a total of 287 lovers.

"I hope that there is also that experience of encountering the unknown, which is what I have experienced over these seven years" and now "being able to pass that on to the spectators" challenging them to "have that experience", she stressed.

For Francisco Frazão, artistic director of the Bairro Alto Theatre, this show can be explained by two verses by Ruy Belo: "Only houses explain / that a word like intimacy exists"

Sapo Mag - NOVEMBER 2021- EXHIBITION OF LOVERS

"These studies gave rise to a live performance in which Raquel André navigates reality and fiction, fantasy and impossibility, everyday life and artistic life to gather the ephemeral and choreograph it poetically into something concrete and possible. "

Performing New Europe: Raquel André - Collection of Artists, Tanz | Áustria, 25 janeiro 2020 (Áustria) Coleção de Artistas

"Raquel André works by accumulation. During seven years she met unknown people in unknown flats in several cities around the world. She shared an intimacy that she recorded in photography. She collected 278 lovers and more than 7000 images."

Agenda de Lisboa, Novembro, 2021 (portugal) - EXHIBITION OF LOVERS