On 15 June, we inaugurated the exhibition Window on the World that presents photographic reflections students, Direndra Selvanayagam, Imani D. Cooper, and Roxana David, celebrating the World Environment Day (June 5). This year’s topic is climate action.
The exhibition is organized in the scope of the Ecocultures seminar (MA & PhD in Culture Studies, Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa), with the support of the Lisbon Consortium and the Research Centre for Communication and Culture.
The World Environment Day wishes to bring awareness to pressing environmental matters, respond to and engage with worldwide efforts of environmental action creatively, and foster a meaningful reflection on the interrelation and interdependence between humans, non-humans, and planet Earth.
In the context of the Ecocultures seminar, we visited the exhibition “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Giovanni Blandino at Estufa Fria. The visit was guided by the curator Dela Miessen, alumna of the LXC, who gave us ta glimpse to the curatorial and production processes of exhibitions that take place in special environments and include sensitive materials, such as glass and ceramics.
The artistic practice of Giovanni Blandino employs methodologies from alchemy that aims to knowledge production through engagement with the environment.
The exhibition is ongoing at Estufa Fria until March 29, 2026.
Francisco Trêpa’s (Lisbon, 1995) ‘Gall Ball’ that is in exhibition in Engawa Space at CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian is curated by students from the Curatorial Practices seminar in the MA program of Culture Studies, under the supervision of Prof. Luísa Santos and resulting from a protocol with CAM and UCP. The exhibition and the related programming serve as a prologue to Institution(ing)s – Co-Creating Inclusive and Sustainable European Art Institutions, a European Cooperation Project that encourages contemporary art and cultural organizations to co-create innovative institutional models that, through experimentation, co-creation, speculation, and advocacy of sustainable futures, contribute to social inclusion, environmental, economic, and artistic transformation.
Francisco Trêpa’s artistic practice explores the interconnections between life forms, metamorphosis, and hybridism. Gall Ball is inspired by the observation of galls found in CAM’s Garden, where the artist first encountered these biological reactions resulting from interactions between plants (such as oaks) and external agents (such as wasps). The effect is a swelling growth on the outside of the plant, providing nutrition and shelter to induce insects.
Trêpa’s fascination stems from the way galls dissolve the tension between interior and exterior, host and parasite, autonomy and symbiosis. Far from being mere defensive reactions, they represent spaces of transformation and biological empathy – microcosms in which the plant, without apparent direct benefit, hosts the presence of the other. In this gesture of natural hospitality, the artist sees a possible inversion of survivalist logic, pointing instead to cooperation as a vital force in life-affected relationships.
The ‘ball’ in the title points to a general rehearsal performed by Trêpa’s constellation of ceramic sculptures. The gallery is understood as an extension of the studio, with a space dedicated to production where the artist will be creating and finishing works. The process of physical and chemical transformation through which clay gives way to ceramics is made visible in the sculptures presented at different stages of the process: raw, unglazed, uncoloured, and finished. Over the course of the exhibition, these forms reveal distinct moments of this crystallization, thus manifesting a body in continuous transmutation until it reaches its irreversible condition.
‘Gall Ball’ includes an associated programme that includes visits, workshops, and other activities.
Artistic direction
Luísa Santos
Curators and authors of the texts
César Sarno Daniel Guedes Lorena Vest Olga Rogova Triniti Goldsmith
Curators for the public programme
Leonor Lisboa Carlotta Ceraudo Csenge Bognár Sofia Talami Antonina Stanczuk-Sturgólewska
This exhibition, organized in the context of the partnership between the international academic network The Lisbon Consortium and CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, was curated by the MA students in Culture Studies (seminar of Curatorial Practices), for the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery, at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon.
Nostalgia is a “temporal paradox” (Ravasco 2024) that blurs the lines between past and present, between imagination and remembrance. It can be cathartic, alchemical, dull, inspiring or painful. It can be consciously provoked or accidentally triggered by a vision, a sound, a smell.
For the closing of Rita Ravasco’s installation Tempo Sentido (Casa do Comum, Nov. 13 – Dec. 8) we invite you to participate in our Creative Writing Workshop and/or our Open Mic Session, and share what makes you nostalgic!
Bring an object or photograph, personal or found, and look into how and why it triggers a nostalgic longing in you.
Creative Writing Workshop (Bilingual EN/PT)
Dec. 8, 15h-16h
Through a series of generative writing prompts anchored in the photo or object you decide to bring, we will explore different dimensions of nostalgia and the way it interacts with emotions, public and private life.
The workshop prompts will be offered in English and Portuguese. You are free to write in any language.
Workshop participants have the option to share the outcome of this creative writing session in the Open Mic Session that follows after.
Workshop led by: Emily Marie Passos Duffy (Lisbon-based poet, performer and researcher)
Workshop spaces are limited, if you are interested, please register under: info.diffractions@gmail.com
Open Mic (Bilingual EN/PT)
Dec. 8, 16:30h-18h
In our Open Mic Session, we invite participants to share with us their thoughts, stories, poems, etc. about a nostalgic object or photograph they choose to bring (ca. 5 mins/participant). Photographs can be brought in analogue or digital form. Feel free to speak in Portuguese or English.
“The cover art by Rita Ravasco, showcasing a seemingly random collection of dysfunctional objects connected by colourful threads, is part of a multimedia art piece with the title Tempo Sentido [Time Sensed] exploring the functioning of memory and nostalgia. The human mind is figuratively represented as a sensory archive through these interconnected objects, representing the way memory and nostalgia can be triggered by sensory experience, creating an endless network of memory, longing and affect across time and space. The digital painting on our cover is interconnected with another digital piece, a video-animation, and a temporary on-site installation at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Our cover art is in fact a digital sketch and image detail of the installation on site and together with the animation will remain as a digitally archived remnant of the on-site installation. The close communication between the digital and the physical mirror the extension of our very own life and of our memories into digital space. The multilayered piece evokes a myriad of questions connected to the functioning of nostalgia as an affect fusing diverse memories, times and spaces in the human mind as it is triggered by the physical and the digital.” (Miriam Thaler, “Editorial: Nostalgia,” Diffractions 8, 2024: 2-3)
Window on the World is a project developed in the scope of the Ecocultures seminar (MA & PhD in Culture Studies, Faculty of Human Sciences), with the support of the Lisbon Consortium and CECC (Research Centre for Communication and Culture). It explores the inextricable relationship between culture and nature.
The photography exhibition celebrates World Environment Day (June 5) and showcases photos produced and selected by the students participating in the Ecocultures seminar, under the guidance of Prof. Diana Gonçalves. World Environment Day 2024, hosted by Saudi Arabia, focuses on land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience.
Using the expression “window on the world” as a motto, the exhibition wishes to bring awareness to pressing environmental matters, respond to and engage with worldwide efforts of environmental action creatively, and foster a meaningful reflection on the interrelation and interdependence between humans, non-humans, and the planet Earth.
We would like to invite you to the fifth installation of Ayni: Theorems of Reciprocity, the multi-media installation Time Machine (2023), by Igor Jesus. This installation integrates photography, movement, interactive sound, and radio elements and will premiere at Galeria Antecâmara,on the 28th of March 2024, from 6 p.m. Join us as we watch Time Machine transition from day to night.
Presented at Antecamara starting on the 28th March to 4th May 2024, Igor’s Time Machine explores philosophical perspectives that give priority to human-centric views of reality. Consistent with Igor practice, the exhibition highlights that creativity and artistic expression have the special power to make visible what is invisible.The work, in conversation with the physical space of the here and now, also pulsates with dynamic sound and visual effects, offering a sensory journey that extends beyond the boundaries of the gallery space.
Time Machine builds on Igor Jesus’s previous works, including Poem of Fire (2021), where he blended classical and electronic music together with light and astrological activity. Inspired by the unfinished work of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1871–1915), Poem of Fire explored the modeling of sound after the visual, using a NASA database to translate solar pulses into song. Lastly, by framing the piece’s multisensory elements within Galeria Antecâmara, one can imagine Jesus’s narrative infusing the hollowed spaces of the building’s architecture, while also, due to the space’s exhibitionism-ready windows, extending beyond the confines of the gallery.
Igor Jesus lives and works in Lisbon and has a degree in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. In 2013, he won the first prize in the ICA (Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual) competition for the making of short films. Igor most recent group exhibitions include: HangarOut – EntreLinhas, Palácio Marquês de Abrantes (2017), 2016 Artists’ Film International (at MAAT, Lisbon, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Istanbul Modern, Turkey, GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Italy, and Projecto 88, Mumbai, India).
Curated by PhD and MA Students in Culture Studies at The Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa: Teresa Weinholtz, Aishwarya Kumar, Rosalind Murphy, Ida Svee and Joana Nóbrega. In the framework of the seminar in Curatorial Practices, coordinated by Luísa Santos. Support: República Portuguesa – Cultura | DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes.
The opening of the exhibition installation An Experiment in Intervals III – Violet Desert by The Third Thing will take place on March 7, 2024, at 18h.
The Third Thing (PT/AUS) is an arts-based research collaboration between Nithya Iyer and Vlad Mizikov. It seeks to investigate experimental methodologies in the negotiation, actualisation and instrumentalisation of the body in spatial territories. Opening at Antecâmara on the 7th of March, An Experiment in Intervals III – Violet Desert (2022) reads the site of the industrial park in Barreiro, Portugal, through the lens of ‘monstrous architecture’. When the live, attentive and improvisational body – the phenomenological agent – encounters this territory, an Interval is begun: the multiplicity of futures manifest in the tensile and reflexive passage of a body leaking through space-time.
Curated by MA and PhD Students in Culture Studies: Silvia Laurelli, Hannah Dörfel, Anna Salvi, Inés Solustri and María Moreno Navarro.
You can find more information about the project at AYNI instagram and website.
We’re thrilled to invite you to join us on February 15 at 18:00, in Galeria Antecâmara, for the opening of the A Fundo na Paisagem exhibition, by LANDRA, running till March 1.
A Fundo na Paisagem – Deep into the Landscape is a project about life’s unapologetic resilience. In Porto, nestled in the patio of the CCOP, an extraordinary transformation began in August 2022. The artist duo poses a riddle steeped in wonderment: how can a cold cement patio become a vibrant agroforest? In Antecâmara, we will be able to see the different processes behind this transformation, as well as different elements that made the destruction/construction possible.
We hope you can join us for the afternoon filled with creativity and conversation. LANDRA, known for their innovative artistic expressions, will be showing the work at the gallery. Galeria Antecâmara, with its captivating ambiance, serves as the perfect meeting place for this unique gathering.
Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us in reply or on instagram. You can also find more information on our website.
We would like to invite you to the second installation of Ayni: Theorems of Reciprocity, the projection of “Goals”, a video performance piece by Jabulani Maseko, followed by a roundtable talk with the artist and the curators. It will take place at Hangar on the 18th of January 2024, from 7 p.m.
The event will be the second installation of the Ayni: Theorems of Reciprocity project, which is a set of five project rooms at Brotéria, HANGAR, Antecâmara, and Universidade Católica Portuguesa that will feature works by Rita Ferreira, Jabulani Maseko, LANDRA – Sara Rodrigues and Rodrigo Camacho, The Third Thing – Nithya Iyer and Vlad Mizikov, and Igor Jesus.
Presented at Hangar, in January 2024, Maseko’s video installation Goals (2018) takes center stage. This ten-minute piece unfolds against a winter-landscape in Switzerland, capturing Maseko’s struggle as he pushes a goalpost from one side of the frame to the other. The video cleverly plays with the idiomatic expression “moving the goalpost”, embodying a physical and metaphorical push, reflecting the artist’s journey to redefine boundaries and test the limits of the body. This work also reaffirms the artist’s way of working, which often reflects where he is geographically at any given moment. Following the screening of Goals, the evening transitions into an interactive conversation with Maseko. The talk delves into the overarching theme of the body in his work, exploring its recurrence and significance in his broader artistic portfolio. A unique exploration of the body as a site of contradictory emotions and states is promised, threading the narratives of both personal and collective memory, and offering visitors an engaging and reflective experience.
Jabulani Maseko, born in Apartheid South Africa in 1977, was the first black student at Redhill, a private school for white children at the time. He left the country at 18, coinciding with the collapse of the regime. His pursuit of higher education led him to the UK, where he earned a master’s degree at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Maseko’s works have graced group and solo exhibitions across the United States, Europe, and Africa. Maseko’s creative arsenal, which spans sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and performance, often gravitates towards materials rich with meaning from his childhood in Apartheid South Africa. His works delve into the collective black experience throughout history- a history based on the black body in conflict with society and ultimately in conflict with itself.
Curated by students of the MA and PhD programmes in Cultural Studies, The Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in the framework of the seminar in Curatorship, coordinated by Luísa Santos. Support: República Portuguesa – Cultura | DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes.
Learn more about the project on our website, and our Instagram @ayni_theoremsofreciprocity.
The opening of Ayni: Casa de Chá | Tea House exhibition will take place at Brotéria on the 11th January, 2024, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
The exhibition which can be visited during the working hours of Brotéria from 11th to 27th of January,2024, inaugurates the Ayni, theorems of reciprocity project, which is a set of five project rooms at Brotéria, Antecâmara, HANGAR and Universidade Católica Portuguesa that will feature works by Rita Ferreira, Igor Jesus, LANDRA – Sara Rodrigues and Rodrigo Camacho, The Third Thing – Nithya Iyer and Vlad Mizikov, and Jabulani Maseko.
In Ayni: Casa de Chá | Tea House, artist Rita Ferreira proposes to engage with the aesthetic and functional dimensions of Broteria’s Reading Room, as well as explore the tension between the notions of originality and reproduction. The artist’s painting lies on the surface of a large table, beneath a layer of protective glass. This translucent horizontal surface opens a window into the past and functions as a mirror of the present, inviting the inhabitants of the space to take notice and act upon the artwork. Here, Ferreira’s archive – meaningful or trivial forms and objects collected over time – undergoes a process of abstraction that seeks to fixate the fluid and destabilize the still.
Rita Ferreira was born in Obidos in 1991 and is currently residing and working in Lisbon. She obtained a BA in Painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts (University of Lisbon). In 2023, Rita Ferreira was one of the finalists of the Amadeo Souza-Cardoso Prize and was also one of the finalists in 2022 of the EDP New Artists Prize.
Curated by students of the MA and PhD programmes in Cultural Studies, The Lisbon Consortium, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in the framework of the seminar in Curatorship, coordinated by Luísa Santos. Support: República Portuguesa – Cultura | DGARTES – Direção-Geral das Artes.
Learn more about the project on our website, and our instagram @ayni_theoremsofreciprocity.
Two weeks ago, on May 3, the Lisbon Consortium organized a visit to the photography exhibition Photo Ark by Joel Sartore (Cordoaria Nacional). The visit took place in the scope of the seminar on Contemporary Culture and the Environment.
The finissage and presentation of the catalogue of the exhibition “Os Olhos Escutam-The Eyes Listen” will take place on May 16, at 5pm, at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Galeria Fundação Amélia de Mello).
The presentation will be followed by the Performance “Aplauso-Applause” with Tomás Cunha Ferreira, David Louis Zuckerman and Marcos Barbosa.
The inauguration of the Nucleus “The Ballets Russes in Lisbon” from the exhibition “Os Ballets Russes: Modernidade após Diaghilev”, will take place on July 26th at 6:00 pm, at Museu Nacional do Teatro e da Dança.
Celebrating the centenary of the Ballets Russes season in Lisbon, the exhibition reflects on the artistic modernity of Serguei Diaghilev’s project and has the participation of contemporary artists.
“The Ballets Russes: Modernity after Diaghilev” is a Lisbon Consortium project, with the support of Fundação Millennium BCP and other partners, coordinated by Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, rector of Universidade Católica Portuguesa and director of the LxC, with the assistence of students of the MA and PhD programs in Culture Studies.
The exhibition, that opens this friday and can be seen until the end of September, comprises three clusters, displayed in different cultural venues in Lisbon and includes a performance by Teatro Praga and a work by Vasco Araújo.
13 Shots is the title of the exhibition project by artist Aimée Zito Lema (b. 1982, NL) which opens on Thursday 28 June at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Modern Collection Project Space). Curated by researchers Luísa Santos, Ana Cachola and Daniela Agostinho, this is one of the eight chapters of the exhibition created as part of the 4Cs: from Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, a collaborative project coordinated by FCH-UCP and co-funded by the European Union’s “Creative Europe” programme. The project presented here is the result of a period of research residency completed by the artist at Rua das Gaivotas 6. 13 Shots brings together works that explore various aspects of individual, social and political memory – the result of the artist’s collaboration with the Lisbon Theatre of the Oppressed Group at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum’s Multipurpose Room. Through performative exercises co-created by the artist and the group, the intergenerational transmission of the 25 April revolution and the photographic archive of the ACARTE service become material for investigating the way in which memory is passed on through stories, images, gaps and silences that are reproduced, filled, and reimagined collectively.
On June 1st we will go to Sintra’s Art Museum to visit the photography exhibition Significação, guided by Ricardo Escarduça, student of the Master in Culture Studies. The artists will be present for a talk after the visit.
A bus will leave UCP at 2.30 pm and will return from Sintra at 6.00 pm
Those who are interested in coming with us, please send a confirmation email to lxconsortium@fch.lisboa.ucp.ptbefore May 21, to secure a place in the bus.
The MA student Atena Abrahimia was the curator of the group photography exhibition “RECRIAR: Portugueses do Luxemburgo”, that gathers works by Sven Becker, Paulo Lobo, Bruno Oliveira, Jessica Theis. The exhibition will take place between the 7th and the 30th of June in Fábrica Braço de Prata, at Sala Arendt.
Since the enlargement of the European Union to 28 countries, an increase of migration flows can be observed. During the past decade, the number of intra-European and, above all, international migrants has risen tremendously, which makes it one of the most important and urgent issues of our time.
The group photography exhibition ‘RECRIAR: Portugueses do Luxemburgo’ concentrates on the public and private lives of the Portuguese who have settled down in Luxembourg since the 1960s. The works of four photographers from Luxembourg will be presented: Sven Becker, Paulo Lobo, Bruno Oliveira and Jessica Theis. Each of them will explore a different aspect of the theme.
Since 1960, the number of Portuguese in Luxembourg has risen. Today they make up around 16% of the total Luxembourgish population. The Portuguese in Luxembourg represent the highest proportion of Portuguese in relation to the local population, outside of Portugal. What is the reason for this high percentage? What has driven so many Portuguese to leave their country and choose Luxembourg as their destination? Besides trying to find answers to these questions, this exhibition also examines the challenges of identity and belonging as well as the challenges and results of immigration which have shaped the Portuguese Luxembourgers and Luxembourg as a country.
The exhibition “Significação. Outras Margens do Jardim” was organized and produced by the Lisbon Consortium Master student Ricardo Escarduça, with the coordination of Maria de Carvalho, during his internship at the Lxc partner Parques de Sintra-Monte da Lua. The exhibition, that opens May 5 and goes until June 3, shows the work of four artists, selected in the open competition. The juri was composed by Isabel Capeloa Gil, Marc Lenot and Sérgio. B. Gomes and had Peter Hanenberg as scientif adviser.
On Exile functions as a liminal space, located on the borderland between ethnographic and artistic research, between the scientific and the philosophical; it is a space where, in the poignant words of Homi K. Bhaba, [2] “[p]rivate and public, past and present, the psyche and the social develop an interstitial intimacy”. This integration of academic, political and psychological discourses with a visual art creates an intimate space for investigation. This unique crossroad invites the visitor to join the effort, to interact with the notion of exile in ways which would not be possible otherwise. It might even lead to wonder about these separations in the first place.
Parques de Sintra Monte da Lua, one of the partners of the Lisbon Consortium, will promote a collective photography exhibition between May 5 and June 3, 2018, under the title “Significação. Outras Imagens do Jardim”. Artists are invited to submit their competition proposals, following the regulations that can be found here.
In the call for artists, we can read:
“Using the gardens, parks and hunting grounds that are under Parques de Sintra’s management as a working place, this show intends to promote a fresh look over the historical heritage, stimulating and supporting the artistic contemporary production and its fruitions by diverse audiences.”
Last thursday, November 9, José Carlos Teixeira met the Lisbon Consortium students for an informal meeting. The visual artist, who also teaches at University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about his background and the current exhibition at MAAT, “On Exhile”, tackling subjects like migration, displacement and identity.
The Lisbon Consortium 