THE INNOVATIVE AND REFLECTIVE NATURE OF

Adriana Molder (Portugal, 1975). Lives and works in Lisbon. She obtained a degree in Stage Design at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema and a degree in Drawing and Fine Arts at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual) in Lisbon. In 2003, won the CELPA/ Vieira da Silva’s Visual Arts Revelation Award, and in 2007 the Herbert Zapp Prize for Young Art in Berlin. Her work is exhibited in several public and private collections, such as of Banco Espirito Santo, EDP Foundation, Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild, C.A.V., Caixa Geral de Depósitos, António Cachola Collection, Berardo Collection, Union Fenosa and Kupferstichkabinett-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Adriana Proganó (Luzern, 1992), lives and works in Lisbon. Adriana graduated in Visual Arts, ESAD, Caldas da Rainha, studied painting at the Accademia di Belli arti di Venezia, Italy, and did a Post Graduation in Visual Arts at ESAD as well. Proganó's work is based on her own imaginary, in which the gesture of painting is an impetus, not only spontaneous, but necessary. Paintings with vibrant colours and fearless, unrestrained brushstrokes are testimony to what occupies the artist's mind at that moment. The body and the weight of social norms are frequent themes in her works, never forgetting genuineness and humour, in a will to create that cannot be contained.

The work of Adrien Missika (1981, Paris) humorously investigates the natural and the cultural. Using epistemology as a base for research, his conceptual approach drifts into poetic and hypothetical narratives.
Through a variety of media, from video, photography, sculpture to installation and action, the work digs into the wide range of natural and environmental sciences, such as biology, landscape architecture and geography to name a few. Overcoming the logic of capitalism, Missika's artistic practice nurtures a space for possible worlds.

Adália Alberto (1973, Leiria, Portugal) believes that art is a critical and provocative vision of the society we live in, combined with an aesthetic harmony that may or may not evoke emotions that are sometimes difficult to materialize.It is a constant questioning of our role as citizens in the so-called global world, in the attempt to find answers to our concerns.Art allows us not to be captives of a single perspective. Art challenges us, provokes us, and confronts us with a society where the human being is constantly tested in the ongoing quest for happiness, for that which truly fulfills them completely.

Albano Neves e Sousa was born on January 15, 1921, in Matosinhos, Portugal, and completed his early education in Luanda, Angola. His artistic journey began with exhibitions in 1936 and 1937, and throughout his life, he became known as a painter and ethnographer. Trained at the School of Fine Arts in Porto, he won numerous awards and was a member of the Porto Independents Group. In 1952, he returned to Angola, where he continued his career and received significant accolades, including gold and bronze medals at international exhibitions. In addition to his paintings, Albano Neves e Sousa contributed to public building decorations, including a large graffiti mural at Luanda International Airport and works in Brazil. His art gained global recognition, with pieces held in museums across Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Spain, and more. Honored with the Orders of Infante D. Henrique and Merit, he passed away on May 11, 1995, in Salvador, Brazil, leaving a lasting legacy in contemporary and Lusophone art.

Alberto Carneiro (Coronado, 1937, Porto, 2017) was a prominent Portuguese sculpture and one of the most awarded artists of his generation. He studied Sculpture at Escola Superior de Belas Artes do Porto and Saint Martin’s School of Art (London), after training for eleven years at traditional oficinas de santeiro in his hometown of Coronado. His work was instrumental to the contemporisation of Portuguese sculpture and its emancipation from the kind of decorative statuary so dear to the Portuguese totalitarian regime (1926-1974), in a shift towards the conceptual, performative and experimental from the 1960s onwards. Sculpture, installation, photography and drawing were the means used to explore a thematic and visual language based on the relationship between the body and natural elements. This resulted in a markedly original body of work notable for its questioning of the landscape, nature and how humans relate to the world. His educational career also influenced various generations of artists and architects.

Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils (b. 1987) has developed a unique visual language based on the removal of the surface layers of walls and other media with non-conventional tools and techniques. He began interacting with the urban environment through the practice of graffiti in the early 2000s. Peeling back the layers of our material culture like a modern-day urban archaeologist, Vhils reflects on the impact of urbanity, development and global homogenisation on landscapes and people's identities. Destroying to create, he delivers powerful and poetic visual statements from materials the city rejects, humanising depressed areas with his poignant large-scale portraits.

Alfie Rouy (1998, UK) explores ways of materialising the flow of versatile, fluid-like energies and frequencies that intertwine the mind with the Earth’s current phase of existence. Alongside this, there is a consistent narrative that pushes towards the evolution of Earth, the soul and the oneness of all.

José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, was a central figure of Portuguese modernism and a multifaceted artist who primarily stood out in the visual arts and writing. With a sharp sense of humor, demonstrated in the famous anti-Dantas manifesto he wrote at just 19 years old, Almada Negreiros was one of the great artists of the 20th century, with a body of work that extends beyond writing and painting to include graphic design, cinema, and ballet. Illustrated biography with self-portraits and works by the artist.

Amadeo Ferreira de Sousa Cardoso was born in Manhufe, Amarante, on November 14, 1887, into a large, rural bourgeois family that was cultured and deeply Catholic. After attending high school in Amarante and later in Coimbra, he enrolled in 1905 in a preparatory drawing course at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon. The following year, he moved to Paris with the intention of studying architecture. However, the study and continuous practice of drawing, especially caricature, which occupied him most at the time, led him to embrace painting as his vocation and destiny.

Ana Jotta (Lisbon, 1946) has build her work in a sequence of breakthroughs that embody some sort of erasement: of her own previous footsteps; of modernist ideology and post-modern mythologies; and of the notion of authorship - either by deconstructing it or rebuilding it, she has attempted to dismantle the idea of a coherent or univocal style. Through a bare economy of means, her work shows a great sense of intelligence and wit. With Ana Jotta, you can always expect the unexpected.

Ana Pérez-Quiroga (Coimbra, 1960) is a visual artist and performer. Graduated in Sculpture from the Universidade de Lisboa’s School of Fine Arts (FBAUL), she completed the Advanced Course in Visual Arts at Ar.Co (Lisboa, PT). She holds a Masters Degree in Intermedia - Visual Arts from the University of Évora (Évora, PT) and a PhD in Contemporary Art from the University of Coimbra (Coimbra, PT). She is a researcher at CHAIA - Center for History of Art and Artistic Research at the University of Évora. Her work focuses essentially on installation, objects, photography and performance art, while her subjects range from everyday life and its mapping to the importance of common objects and gender issues.

Ana Rebordão (1986) holds a BA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (Lisbon, PT) and a MA in Visual Arts by the Malmö Art Academy (Malmö, SE), having also taken part in the Independent Study Programme at Maumaus - School of Visual Arts (Lisbon, PT). A Calouste Gulbenkian Scholar between 2014-16, she has received the Edstrandska Stiftelsens Stipendium from the Malmö Art Academy (2022, 2016) and is a laureate of the Aase och Richard Björklund Fund, awarded by the Aase Foundation & Richard Björklund Foundation, Malmö (2017). She has collaborated regularly with composer Kent Olofsson since 2016.

Ana Silva (1979, Calulo, Angola) currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. From a young age, she demonstrated a strong passion for creativity. Growing up twenty kilometers away from the nearest village, on the farm where her father grew coffee, Ana spent a lot of time reading and creating what she refers to as "weird things." She often distorted objects and had a habit of cutting shoes to create installations on the walls of her family home, a behavior that deeply concerned her father, prompting a visit to a psychologist. The psychologist reassured her parents, confirming that Ana's actions were simply the expression of an artistic sensibility. Later, she pursued her studies at the ArCo Higher School in Lisbon, where she honed her skills in painting, sculpture, and artistic installation.

Ana Vidigal’s (Lisbon, 1960) work resorts to painting, from collage, assemblage and installation as processes of decontextualization and reconfiguration of images withdrawn from different sources, exploring matters as social and political values and even memories as carriers of those subjects. Graduated in Painting at the Lisbon School of Fine Arts in 1984, Ana Vidigal won a scholarship from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (1985-1987). She studied etching under Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, at the Casa das Artes in Tavira (1989), and was painter in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Fortaleza de São Tiago, Funchal (1989-1999). In 1995, she was commissioned by Lisbon Underground to create tiled panels for Alvalade station, and again in 2002 – this time for the new Alfornelos station.

André Butzer was born in Stuttgart and currently lives and works in Altadena, CA. André Butzer explores the limits and possibilities of the medium painting. Composed of a personal vocabulary of repetitive forms and elements, he constructs an exaggerated reality expressed through vivid colouring and explores the possibilities and limits of painting. André Butzer ́s work references German and American history, culture and politics, art history, science fiction, comics and animation. His works are in important public collections, including the Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kupferstichkabinett/State Museums of Berlin; LACMA; MOCA; Phoenix Art Museum; Scharpff Collection, Stuttgart/Bonn; and the University of Chicago.

André Romão was born in Lisbon in 1984, where he lives. His work mostly assumes the form of sculpture and poetry exploring ideas of transformation, mutation and fluidity. Taking emotion and intuition as building blocks his dream-like figures and landscapes often occupy a blurry field between the literary and the natural realms. His work has been featured in institutions such as Serralves Museum (Porto), Centre d'art Contemporain Genève, Liverpool Biennial 2021, MAAT (Lisbon), Berardo Museum (Lisbon), Futura (Prague), The Green Parrot (Barcelona), Macro (Rome), Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo), CAPC (Bordeaux), Spike Island (Bristol), Kunsthalle Lissabon, among others.

Anna Woodward practice looks to create fantasy worlds that sit between utopia and dystopia, creating a space that is beyond the realm of the viewer's reality. A space where biomorphic forms grow freely yet there is still evidence of the human made. Woodward works predominantly in oil on linen, working in a series of layers to create intensity, perspective and depth.

Antoine d’Agata (1961, Marseille, France), interrupted his studies at the age of 17,to live in the world of the night. For 12 years, he lived and traveled in some 20 countries. In 1991, while living in New York with no photographic experience, he enrolled at the International Center of Photography, where he studied with Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. In 1993, he moved to France, worked as a bricklayer, and stopped his photographic practice until 1997.

António Bolota started his artistic career in the mid-90s, carrying his know-how in the field of Engineering into the artistic universe. The artist convokes this particular set of theoretical knowledge as he creates sculptures that challenge the spaces where they are built or fuse with their architecture. He completed the Advanced Course in Ar.Co – Center for Art and Visual Communication in 2008. Lives and works in Lisbon.

A multifaceted artist, António Charrua constructed a markedly abstractionist vocabulary in a highly diverse range of media and supports (drawing, painting, printmaking, graphic arts, ceramics, tiles, stained glass, tapestry, sculpture), always informed by current trends and issues in European and American expressionist painting. He produced an extensive body of work over six decades of continuous activity, consequently creating a considerable number of works.

António Ole was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1951. He studied Afro-American Culture and Film at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and has developed an eclectic body of work over five decades, including drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and film. He draws inspiration from traditional art as a stimulus to develop a contemporary discourse suited to his time and circumstances. The elements in his work evoke the colonial period, slavery, war, destruction, poverty, human nature, and the capacity to resist and survive.

António Palolo was born in Évora in 1946. A self-taught artist, he held his first exhibition in 1964 at Galeria 111 in Lisbon. In 1968, he participated in the "Exposição de Arte Portuguesa" (Exhibition of Portuguese Art) at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which toured Madrid, Paris, and Brussels. He exhibited in several museums abroad, and his major retrospective took place at the Centro de Arte Moderna of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1995. A key figure in the history of Portuguese art, he influenced successive artistic movements from the beginning of his career in the mid-1960s. Known primarily for his work in painting and drawing, little is known about his cinematographic experiments between 1969 and 1978, as well as his video works created between 1977 and the early 1980s. António Palolo is represented in significant public and private collections, as well as in major museums. He passed away in 2000.

António Soares (1894–1978) remains the only significant figure of Portuguese First Modernism not yet the subject of a scientifically-oriented retrospective. A self-taught artist, Soares worked across multiple fields, including painting, drawing, illustration, graphic design, advertising, poster design, set design, and fashion. His style was influenced by both French (Steinlen) and German (German humor) traditions. After visiting the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he embraced Art Deco, with fauvist, cubist, and expressionist influences. He was also a modern innovator in graphic design, advertising, and theater, and a key figure in the development of design in Portugal.

António Vasconcelos Lapa is a renowned Portuguese ceramist known for his innovative approach to traditional pottery. With a deep connection to the cultural heritage of Portugal, Lapa blends modern artistic expression with centuries-old techniques. His works often feature intricate designs and sculptural forms, reflecting his mastery of texture, color, and shape. Over the years, he has become a prominent figure in the contemporary ceramics scene, exhibiting his creations internationally and contributing to the evolution of ceramic art.

Armanda Duarte (Praia do Ribatejo, 1961), studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in Lisbon, where she lives and works. Armanda Duarte’s work is site-specific to such a degree that her proposals are actually determined by her observation and analysis of each given space. She observes the characteristics and details of each context in search of the essence which will lead the process of creation up to the work’s final reception. Her spatial poetics, which involve drawing, sculpture, installation and architecture, provoke subtle and intimate experiences. Armanda’s stripped down, austere and delicate stagings result from the manipulation and composition of everyday objects such as stones, cutlery or tin can lids according to precise objectives such as measurement, balancing and replication.

Armanda Passos (1944-2021) studied Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts of Porto. She lived and passed away in Porto. She was twice honored: in 2012, at the CCB, by President Cavaco Silva, with the Commander of the Order of Merit, and in 2022, posthumously, at the Palácio de Belém, by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, with the rank of Grand Officer of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword.

Artur Bual (Lisbon, 1926 – 1999) was a Portuguese visual artist who had a decisive influence on art in the second half of the 20th century. He was a gestural painter. He held numerous exhibitions in Portugal and abroad. His work is represented in various collections: the Palace of Justice in Lisbon, the Centre for Modern Art of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, National Museums, Municipal Chambers, the Professional Training Centre of Pegões, the Regional Government of the Azores, and others. He created several frescoes in twelve chapels in Alentejo and Ribatejo.

Augustas Serapinas is an artist who works with curiosity and context, devising site-specific installations and uncovering rich human stories hidden just out of sight. His work is born of empathy and open-ended engagement. Most of Serapinas’s shows begin with a conversation with whoever happens to be nearby.

Binelde Hyrcan (1983, Luanda) spent the first years of his life in Angola. During the war and his childhood, he was deeply marked by the deaths and massive destruction in the city. Cadet of a family of thirteen children, he quickly felt the desire to build walls to protect himself against a world of despair. He studied Arts in Monaco and his production crosses sculpture, painting, design, video art and performance. The different supports are the mechanisms used by the artist to reflect paradoxes and complexities of customs and political-social attitudes, thus criticizing structures of power and human vanity.

Carlos Botelho (1899 - 1892, Lisbon) studied at the E.S.B.A.L. where he completed the course in 1921. He left for Paris at the end of his academic studies and frequented the “Grande Chaumière” and “Colarossi”. He carried out numerous illustrations, posters, figurines for the theatre and ballet and worked on magazines of the time. He is the author of a vast number of mural panels in Portugal and abroad. Carlos Botelho was part of the Portuguese modernist movement, absorbing all the elegance and stylisation of drawing. His main works were landscapes and portraits. If, on occasion, it is touched by “naif” aspects and if, at times, abstractionism was a temptation, what is for sure is that what made him stand out from his generation of artists was a certain expressionist, energetic and dissenting slant, which is borne out in his work.

Carlos Bunga (b. 1976 Porto) attended the Escola Superior de Arte e Design in Caldas da Rainha, in Portugal. He currently lives and works near Barcelona. He creates process-oriented works in various formats: sculptures, paintings, drawings, performances, video, and above all in situ installations, that refer to and intervene in their immediate architectural surroundings. While often using ordinary, unassuming materials such as packing cardboard and adhesive tape, Bunga’s work involves a highly developed degree of aesthetic care and delicacy, as well as a conceptual complexity derived from the inter-relationship between doing and undoing, between unmaking and remaking, between the micro and the macro, between investigation and conclusion.

Carlos Calvet (1928, Lisbon) was a portuguese Architect and Painter. Calvet works in painting since 1944 and exhibits since 1947. By the late 40s he became interested strongly by surrealism, having participated in the exhibition "The Surrealists," the Hall of Pathé Baby, Lisbon, 1949. From 1959 until today held 36 solo exhibitions and participated in over fifty collective, in Portugal and abroad.

In his work Carlos Mensil (1988, Santo Tirso) explores the aesthetic and structural potentialities of materials outside their usual context in a territory of conceptual questioning. What we see are scenarios of apparent possibilities, or impossibilities. His work is represented in various national and international public and private collections, such as the Galila Barzilaï -Hollander Collection (BE), the Donna Macmillan Collection (USA) or the Cerveira Biennial Foundation (PT), to name but a few. He is a co-founding member of the independent collective “CampaNice”. He lives and works in Porto, PT.

Carlos Nogueira (1947, Mozambique). He studied sculpture at the School of Fine Arts of Porto and painting at the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon. He was awarded scholarships from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1982-1983), the Secretary of State for Culture (1989-1990), and the Luso-American Development Foundation (1989). He won the Camões Award at the 2nd International Art Biennial of Vila Nova de Cerveira (1980) and received an Honorable Mention at the International Biennial of Sculpture and Drawing in Caldas da Rainha (1995). He represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale (1986), the Milan Architecture Triennale (1996), and the Riga Sculpture Quadriennale (2004). He has been an invited associate professor in the Architecture course at the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa since 1998 and a professor at Colégio Moderno since 1974.He has been a guest lecturer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in São Paulo, the University of Mendrizio, and at the Faculty of Letters, the Faculty of Architecture, and the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon, as well as at Ar.Co, among others.

Cecília Costa (1971, Caldas da Rainha) studied Mathematics at University of Aveiro, and Visual Arts at the ESAD (Escola Superior de Arte e Design) of Caldas da Rainha, and New Media Art at Lusófona University of Lisbon. Since taking part in the 14th Biennale of Sidney, 2004, she has participated in several international exhibitions, for instance, Portugal: Some Figures, National Institute of Fine Arts in México City, 2005; Portugal Today: Nine Solitaire Positions – MAM gallery, Wien, 2005; Young artists – MAM gallery, Salszburg, 2006. She has exhibited her work individually in Galeria Pedro Oliveira, Oporto and in Galeria Baginski, Lisbon. In more recent shows, she has presented objects, installations, sound, distorted furniture, unexpected materials such as water, ice and helium and different kinds of modifed ready-mades. She is a multidisciplinary artist and, although she has explored a variety of artistic disciplines, drawing and sculpture remain her chosen media, and both feeding on each other.

Céline Condorelli (IT, FR, UK) makes exhibitions, installations, publications, sculptures and architectures. She is interested in how our encounter with the material world takes place by relying on it, and that all human action takes place amidst countless structures of support mostly taken for granted, and therefore appearing invisible. From raw materials, cultivation and extraction, to processes of industrialisation and labour, through to methods of display, reception and transmission, Condorelli’s practice closely communicates the methods and labour of its creation.

Angela Detanico (1974) and Rafael Lain (1973) are Brazilian artists living and working in Paris. Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain have been working together for nearly twenty years. They quickly established themselves within the international art scene thanks to their subtle questioning of the modes of conventional representation that surround us. Fascinated by what exceeds man and his understanding of the world, they draw systems of representation and writing of time, space, memory and the infinite from scientific, mathematical and literary research. Inherited from the conceptual statement, established in the use of new mediums of sound, graphic and plastic creation, their thought process appears in a meticulous, uncluttered and poetic formalism. Linguist/semiologist and graphic designer respectively, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain question the use of graphic signs in society.

Frederico Draw, a member of the RUA collective, uses spray cans like pencils to create portraits of often unknown characters. His unique style brings a lyrical quality to his subjects, making each wall resemble a sketchbook where spray paint replaces pencils. The theatrical intensity of his faces is highlighted by the detailed eyes, which contrast with the rest of the face. Rodrigo 'Alma' (aka Contra) is an artist working in graffiti, illustration, installation, and typography. His analog process results in a visual mix reflecting his experiences and thoughts, with a constant pursuit of creativity that shapes his evolving compositions. He is a founding member of the RUA collective.

Gudmundur Gudmundsson, known as Erró, creates scathing and humorous visual critiques of war, autocracy, mass consumerism, and economic and cultural dominance. His vibrant, chaotic paintings, silkscreens, and collages also pay a twisted tribute to historical canonical artists. He began his career in the mid-1950s, painting ghoulish figures. Living in the midst of the ferment of 1960s Paris, as the battles in Algeria and Vietnam raged, shaped his outlook, while his first encounter with American Pop art in 1962 was a watershed moment. Since then, Erró has been mining mass media—including the Disney empire, comics, magazines, newspapers, and advertisements—and art history for his roiling compositions.

Edmond Brooks-Beckman (1987 in London). He holds an MA in Painting from The Royal College of Art (2021-2023). His graduation show work 'Inscriptions beneath the skin', 2023 won the coveted Valerie Beston Prize. He has a BFA from Brighton University (2006-2009). Brooks-Beckman has integrated his studio and lecturing practice. After completing a PGCE at the IOE in 2016, the artist worked within secondary education as an Art and Design teacher he progressed on to foundation course leader at the Hampstead School of Art until 2023. Through layers of thick oil paint and symbolism woven into his evolving visual language, Brooks-Beckman explores family history, personal experiences, and contemporary consciousness. The artist creates palimpsests paintings, revealing his application, carving, and cutting technique while capturing the delicate balance between creation and erasure.

Edson’s (1977, Angola) photographic practice is primarily urban, inscribed in physical and conceptual axes that are simultaneously local and global. Edson works in series, often kept open and unfinished, to which he returns over time, highlighting the meditative aspect a practice in which performative gestures, more or less apparent, assume an essential role. The series as Found Not Taken, Oikomonos and Tipo Passe, for example, result in performative acts performed on/with discarded objects.

Eduardo Batarda (1943, Coimbra) started studying medicine in 1960, but dropped-out three years later. He studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy in Lisbon (1963-1968) and then went on to attend the Royal College of Art in London (1971-1974) with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. This period was decisive in securing a tendency, already perceptible in his first paintings and from there on systematically present in his work, to think art, and the function, history and theory of art, within painting itself.

Eduardo Nery (1938, Figueira da Foz) was a Portuguese painter widely known for his extensive investigations of pictorial space and visual mobility, representing Abstract Illusionism and the Op Art movements.He developed a vast professional activity in the fields of painting, drawing, engraving, photography, tapestry, tiles, stained glass, mosaic, mural reliefs, design of urban pavements and colour projects for facades in architectural complexes.He won several prizes in Portugal, the most recent being the Bordalo da Imprensa, Artes Plásticas Prize/95 and one of the national prizes Bento Pessoa Casino Figueira, 2007. Abroad, he was distinguished with 6 prizes in Italy (1975/1977) and in Spain (1977).

Engrácia Cardoso (1976, Tomar) holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts - Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. She regularly exhibits in solo and group exhibitions. She has taught fine arts and painting restoration techniques. She lived in Guimarães for 12 years, where she completed her Bachelor's degree and began her artistic relationship with the city.

Ernesto Rancaño (1968, La Habana) Graduated from the Academy of Arts of San Alejandro, La Habana, Cuba. His works can be found in permanent collections in Panama, Mexico, Jamaica and Spain. With an aesthetics that some critics have called 'post-medieval', but that owes much to the interpretation of universal art and the exploration of national identity, installed in a fantastic space where any mixture is possible and where sorrows can be enveloped in softness and candor, a search for spirituality that traps the most diverse public can be found in the work of this artist.

Eva Rothschild (1971, Dublin) represented Ireland at the La Biennale di Venezia 58th International Art Exhibition in 2019 and has been an elected Royal Academician since 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Kosmos,’ Australian Centre For Contemporary Art, Melbourne; 'Alternative to Power,' The New Art Gallery, Walsall; 'A Gated Community,' Sonnaveld House, Rotterdam; Hugh Lane Museum, Dublin; 'Sightings', Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; and 'Hot Touch,' Hepworth Wakefield and Kunstverein Hannover.

Evelina Oliveira (1961, Abrantes) studied Drawing at ESAP and Art History at the Soares dos Reis Museum. She also pursued various courses in illustration, ceramics, painting, and lithography, as well as a Master's in Illustration from the University of Évora. She has taught illustration at the National Society of Fine Arts and, since 1994, has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and abroad.

Fernando Alvim (1963, Angola) is an artist, known for his postwar and contemporary works. Alvim is a self-taught artist who works with various media. Alongside the traditional artist's role, Alvim has also founded several African cultural centres, produces films, and been editor of Coartnews. His art has been showcased in various auctions, achieving prices that reflect his significance in the art world. Alvim currently lives and works in Luanda and Brussels, Belgium.

Filipe Cortez (Portugal, 1986) holds an MA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and a BA in Painting from the same institution. He exhibits regularly since 2007, highlights being his exhibitions in New York City and Taipei. In 2015, he completed a six-month artist residency at Residency Unlimited (New York) from where many collaborations with galleries and curators sprouted. Cortez works within the fields of painting, sculpture, and site-specific installation examining memory and space of architectural spaces. The multidisciplinarity of media have become more and more evident in his work, for which he has received various awards.

Francisco Vidal was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1978, and currently lives and works between Luanda and Lisbon. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York, USA, in 2010, after completing his Bachelor's degree at the School of Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, in 2002, and an Independent Study Program at the Mamaus School of Visual Arts in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2005. Vidal is recognized for his paintings and drawings on paper and canvas, often hand-produced and assembled to create large-scale installations. His work uniquely combines various aesthetic influences, including Cubism, African textiles, 1980s hip-hop culture, contemporary graffiti, and street art.

Gabriel Abrantes (North Carolina, USA, 1984) lives and works in New York and Lisbon. Gabriel Abrantes explores cinematographic language in his films and videos – he writes, directs, produces and occasionally acts in them. The films confront historical, social and political themes through an investigation of post-colonial, gender and identity questions. His work layers improbable readings, twisting traditional narratives while flirting with absurdity, folklore, humor, and politics. Building on the appropriation of Hollywood genres, such as the melodrama, romantic comedies, the war film, adventure movies, etc., and stirring it with a familiar archive of symbolic references, popular culture and contemporary anxieties, Abrantes challenges the way these visual narratives have shaped a common take on History while eroding the frontiers of this conceptual repertoire.

Gabriel Garcia (1977, island of Pico, Azores) lived on the island of S. Miguel where he attended Liceu Antero de Quental. Between 1994 and 1995 he attended the studio. of plastic expression - drawing and painting - from the Academia das Artes de Ponta Delgada, guided by the painter Filipe Franco. He graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon where he developed knowledge in the area of engraving. In addition, there are several training courses such as the I level of photography at Ar.Co and the scientific illustration course at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon .

Gabriela Albergaria’s work involves one territory: Nature. A nature manipulated, planted, transported, set in hierarchy, catalogued, studied, felt and recalled through the ongoing exploration of gardens in photography, drawing and sculpture. The artist views gardens as elaborated constructs, representational systems and descriptive mechanisms that epitomize a set of fictional beliefs that are employed to represent the natural world. Gardens are also environments dedicated to leisure and study, cultural and social processes that produce a historical understanding of what is knowledge and what is pleasure. More generally, the images of gardens and plant species employed by the artist are used as devices to reveal processes of cultural change through which visions of nature are produced.

Gabriela Machado (Joinville, Brazil, 1960) lives and works in Brazil. Her painting, sculpture and drawings tap into the artist’s surroundings and aesthetic compositions found in everyday life. Landscapes and still life find their form through intense brush strokes, luminous colours and contrasting scales. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism from Universidade de Santa Úrsula. She completed her training in painting, drawing, free studio, metal engraving, lithography and other theory courses at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, as well as a course in Aesthetics and Art History taught by Ronaldo Brito at UniRio and PUCRio (Pontifícia Universidade Católica).

Gary Webb (1973, Bascombe, Dorset) is a British artist known for making colorful sculptural works out of industrial materials, such as aluminum, steel, brass and glass. His approach to materials, colors, and compositions has made Gary Webb one of the best artists of his generation. Almost like an alchemist he takes the familiar materials of everyday use and turns them into something unusual, joyful and witty. A variety of influences are noticeable in his work including Minimalism, Pop, and Kinetic art as well as the Tropicalia movement.

Justo Gonzalez Bravo (1944, Badajoz, Spain) has been living in Portugal for over 37 years. At first a figurative painter, he moved toward abstraction later. The MEIAC, Museum of Contemporary Art of Ibero American Art in Badajoz dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. He has been exhibited in numerous galleries throughout the world, including the Galerie Frédéric Got in Paris.

Gonçalo Barreiros (1978, Lisbon) is a sculptor based in Lisbon. He graduated in Sculpture from Ar.Co (Lisbon) and earned a Master's in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, having received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. His solo exhibitions include nosey parker (Vera Cortês Art Agency, Lisbon, 2014), Vraum (Chiado 8, Lisbon, 2013), and n.17, Empty Cube (Colégio das Artes, University of Coimbra, 2013). He has participated in numerous group shows such as Involuntary Memory (Luis Adentado, Valencia, 2017), Sala dos Gessos (Museu da Eletricidade, Lisbon, 2016), and O Riso (Museu da Eletricidade, Lisbon, 2012). He regularly presents his work at Galeria Vera Cortês, with notable solo exhibitions including 3/4 (2006), quero eu fazer as coisas... (2008), and Declaração Amigável (2017).

Graeme Williams (1961, South Africa) has worked, for more than thirty years, on highly personal photographic essays reflecting his response to South Africa’s complex evolution. During the eighties, he produced numerous essays documenting life under apartheid and eventually he joined the collective, Afrapix. Between 1989 and 1994 he covered South Africa’s transition to democracy for Reuters and other news organizations. Since then Williams has concentrated on producing contemporary bodies of work that reflect his complex country.

Graça Morais (1948, Trás-os-Montes region, Portugal) graduated in Painting from the School of Fine Arts of Porto (ESBAP) in 1971. Between 1976 and 1979, she lived in Paris as a grantee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. She has held and participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions, both in Portugal and abroad. In 2008, the Graça Morais Contemporary Art Centre (CACGM) was inaugurated in Bragança. The building, designed by architect Souto Moura, has hosted several exhibitions of the artist's work. Ten years later, the Laboratory of Arts in the Mountain - Graça Morais (LAM-GM) was established to promote new opportunities for teaching and research activities.

Guilherme Parente is a Portuguese painter, born in Lisbon. In the early 1960s, he studied painting with master Roberto Araújo at the National Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon. He also attended engraving courses at Gravura – Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses, in Lisbon. Between 1968 and 1970, he studied at the Slade School in London as a grantee of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Guilherme Parente was a member of the group 5+1, alongside sculptor Virgílio Domingues and painters João Hogan, Júlio Pereira, Sérgio Pombo, and Teresa Magalhães.

Gérard Castello-Lopes (1925, Vichy - 2011, Paris) lived in Lisbon, Cascais, Strasbourg, and Paris. A self-taught photographer, cinema professional, and critic, he started photography in 1956. He worked as an assistant director on the film Os Pássaros de Asas Cortadas (1962) and co-authored the short film Nacionalidade: Português (1970). He was a founding member of the Portuguese Cinema Center, served as President of the Jury of the Portuguese Cinema Institute (1991-1993), and contributed to various press outlets. He won the Verbo Photography Prize in 2006/2007.

Hamilton Francisco (1974, Angola) studied industrial design in Luanda. Since childhood, he has had a passion for drawing and painting, but it was in 2002 that he fully dedicated himself to this art. Today, he lives in the city of Coimbra and is a member of the Mandacaru Cultural Intervention Cooperative, where he develops various cultural projects. He has participated in several exhibitions, such as those at the Banda space in Espelho D'agua with Monica de Miranda, Yonamine Miguel, Lino Damião, Maura Faria, Luandino de Carvalho, and at the International Tourism Fair organized by the University of Coimbra.

Helena Almeida (Lisbon, 1934 - Sintra, 2018) was born in Lisbon, where she lived and worked until 2018. She graduated in Painting from Lisbon’s Fine Art School in 1955. In 1964 she was granted a scholarship in Paris by the Gulbenkian Foundation. Her work covers a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, performance, video, installation and photography. In her first solo show in Portugal (Buchholz, 1967), Almeida presented a group of geometric and abstract paintings that challenged the conventional canvas’ limits. Around 1969, the artist started photographing herself, usually performing different poses in her studio, either alone, interacting with objects found in this space or accompanied by architect and artist Artur Rosa, her husband. Helena Almeida’s practice is often associated with distinctive blue, black or red acrylic ink strokes painted over black and white photographs.

Horácio Frutuoso (1991, Porto) holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto, an institution that awarded him the Fine Arts Acquisition Prize in 2012/2013. He also has professional training in blown and molded glass production and fusion techniques from CENCAL in Marinha Grande. He was a member of the academic performance research group SINTOMA, part of i2ADS at FBAUP. He co-authored the artistic project Expedição, where between 2013 and 2015, he produced and curated various projects, ranging from solo and group exhibitions to performances, residencies, email-art, publications, and collaborations with independent institutions and artistic spaces. In his work, he uses different media, structuring his practice based on the thought and organization of a painting, merging it with visual poetry, digital images, and installation-performance.

Héctor Zamora (1974, Mexico City) work transcends the conventional exhibition space, reinventing and redefining it, creating friction between the common roles of public and private, exterior and interior, organic and geometric, wild and methodical, real and imaginary.Drawing from his technical experience and knowledge of lightweight architectural structures, along with a meticulous emphasis on the conceptualization and construction process of each piece, Zamora involves the participation of the viewer and challenges them to question the everyday uses of materials and the functions of space. Through determined and often repetitive actions, the artist provokes surprising and unexpected situations.

Ignasí Aballí's (1958, Barcelona, Spain, in 1958) work is deeply rooted in conceptual art, exploring how perception and representation shape our understanding of everyday objects, language and media. His work often features minimalist approaches, questioning the nature of images, time and the concept of absence. Aballí engages with the notion of ‘disappearance’, using materials such as newspapers and subtle interventions to examine how information is consumed, lost or altered, exploring the relationship between images and texts. He invites viewers to reflect on the complexities of visual culture, memory and the passage of time. His work pushes the boundaries between what is seen and what is unseen, challenging us to reconsider the role of art in conveying meaning and perception. His approach to visual language is often critical, turning ordinary objects into profound reflections on contemporary life.

Angel Ihosvanny Cisneros Felicidade (Angola) is a self taught artist who divides his time between Barcelona and Luanda. His practise comprises painting, video and installation, which he uses to apprehend the physical chaos and psychic experiences of urbanism. Luanda’s cityscape provides a constant source of material for his work: scenes of disorder and arrest are transmuted and synthesised into a reflective visual lexicon.

Inês Mendes Leal (b. 1997) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Lisbon, with a Swiss, French, and Portuguese background. She completed a Postgraduate in Sound Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts University of Lisbon, in 2023, and a Postgraduate in Contemporary Photography Speeches at the same institution in 2020. Between 2018 and 2019, she attended École de Recherche Graphique (ERG) in Brussels/Belgium, focusing on Photography, Installation, and Performance, and completed her Bachelor in Multimedia Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts University of Lisbon, 2016/19.

Inês Brites (Coimbra, 1992) lives and works in Lisbon. She did her BA in Painting at Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon and studied at KAS: Conservatorium & School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Brites' work refers to what is familiar, starting from found and produced objects, in an exploratory conversation about materials and their purpose. Using unorthodox techniques, the artist questions the meaning of objects, analysing the impact of these bodies on the individual, society, and culture, through the memories of our daily lives and intimacy.

Born in Lisbon, Isabel Maria Contreras do Botelho has been dedicated to painting and drawing for many years. She works in a primate organization as a teacher of Painting and Drawing. Although she identifies as a figurative artist, her paintings possess a personal, gestural, and intuitive quality, while also being conceptual and rich in symbolism. They reflect memories, spiritual moods, and images of objects seen in the past, in places and moments that may be imagined. She works with a variety of materials, including oils, acrylics, pastels, gouaches, watercolors, and Indian ink. Throughout her career, she has maintained an independent approach, transforming her artistic creations into deeply personal, meaningful scenes.

Isaque Pinheiro (1972, Lisbon, Portugal) is an artist who explores different media through his art, where classical and contemporary issues relating to the artist's workshop are often explored in unison, and an intense critical reflection is taken on what he presents to us, assisted by a certain technical mastery. This is mostly evident in his sculpture exhibitions, particularly made of marble, where irony and expertise meet.

Jacinto Luis (1945, Fátima, Portugal) moved to Paris in 1964, where he began his first works in drawing and painting in 1969. From 1971 to 1975, he was awarded a scholarship by the Italian Government, attending the Academy of Arts in Rome, Italy. He also received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris from 1982 to 1983. The artist lived in Madrid from 1992 to 1997.

Jesus Curiá's practice is concerned with capturing the essence of the human being. His sculptures blend figurative elements – often heads and hands – with abstracted bodies in an attempt to express tradition, modernity and ethnic culture, which have remained the foundation of his approach throughout the years. Curiá's characters, which have an almost ancient quality, are a reflection of the artist's ideas and emotions toward the contemporary world – raising questions of identity, community and globalisation. Ambiguity in the expression of Curiá's figures is fundamental to the artist's visual language. The facial features in his works are neither western nor non-western, male nor female. Curia's sculptures are archetypes, eliminating boundaries and the qualities that distinguish and divide us. As a result, they are a tribute to the human being itself, and the principles that unite us. Their powerful forms and gestures evoke a broad range of emotions including joy, serenity and, at times, loneliness.

Joana Escoval (1982) lives and works in Lisbon. Her practice circumscribes both visual and aural in the form of sculpture, collective walks, video installations, and printed matter. Joana Escoval’s works are passages, open-ended invisible paths. The rhythm and fluidity of the elements she uses in her work are temporarily suspended in time, and will eventually follow their natural transition and transmission into other states of matter, keeping their new-found charges and vibrations from when they were sculptures. Whichever form they’re found in (mostly metals compounded or purified, mixed as alloys or mixed with other materials), these elements are charged with energies that unite beings and objects, the material and the spiritual. Escoval blurs the borders between what we are so used to calling “nature” and “culture,” and emphasises instead how everything is entangled and connected, seeing “nature” and its cycles beyond a western point-of-view—and most of all seeing it as something that is not separate from us.

Joana Vasconcelos (1971, Lisbon, Portugal) is a visual artist with a career spanning nearly 30 years and a huge variety of media. Recognised for her monumental sculptures and immersive installations, she decontextualises everyday objects and updates the arts and crafts concept for the 21st century, establishing a dialogue between the private sphere and public space, popular heritage and high culture. With humor and irony, she questions the status of women, consumer society and collective identity.

John Trashkowsky (1978, Zurich) critiques consumerism and modern society by transforming everyday objects into satirical art. His bold, ironic installations not only question societal values but also confront the contradictions of modern life, using humor to highlight the absurdity in the pursuit of material perfection.

John Wood and Paul Harrison have been collaborating since 1991 and produced their first work Board in 1993. They explore how we interact with the world around us, highlighting the ordinary, the absurd and the accidental. Wood and Harrison are fascinated by architecture and design and how we engage with our environment in unintended ways. They explore the human tendency to improvise or mess things up, arguably in a good way. Their works form a kind of reference manual for how to do, make, build, or draw things that you probably never want to do, make, build, or draw. They do it for you, even though you didn’t ask them to. During the past 15 years there have been radical developments in their work, shifting from almost exclusively video work to a practice that incorporates multiple ways of examining themes first explored in their screen-based works. Now across video, sculpture, painting and drawing, they continue to demonstrate the triumphs and tribulations of living life and making art.

Jorge Galindo was trained in the workshops of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, and his artistic oeuvre spans more than three decades. Describing his own work as “dirty pop,” his monumental paintings are gestural and expressionist. Over the past thirty years, Jorge Galindo has made paintings which often synthesize elements of collage. Using a range of materials, his lush and colourful surfaces are executed in an energetic, sometimes chaotic style. His collection placements include Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; Museo Helga de Alvear, Cáceres; Museo Marugame Hirai, Japan; ING Belgium Collection, Brussels; among many others.

Jorge Molder (1947, Lisbon, Portugal) was trained in Philosophy at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. He worked as a military psychologist at the time of the Portuguese Colonial War. Molder uses his body to create his works, establishing categories that are based on analogies and relationships, allowing him to form groups and series of images to determine visual and conceptual hierarchies.

José Pedro Cortes (1976, Porto, Portugal) studied at Kent Institute of Art and Design (Master of Arts in Photography) in the UK. In 2005, after 3 years living in London, he moved back to Lisbon and was part of Gulbenkian Creativity and Artistic Creation Program in Photography. On that same year, Cortes had his first solo exhibitions at Centro Português de Fotografia and Silo Gallery, both in Porto, Portugal. In that year, Cortes was also selected for the Photo London - Emerging Artists Presentations and, in 2006, took part in the Getty Images curated exhibition New Photographers 2007.

The Portuguese sculptor José Pedro Croft (1957, Porto, Portugal) has followed, during almost twenty years, his own constructive process in his work which has determined his authorship. This means that, although he is aligned with what we call contemporary art in the Occidental world, he does not betray his own conceptual proposals and creative expressions. Through his sculptures, he establishes poetic contents that allow the spectator to connect with the singularity of the visual universe, reaching out to more than just aesthetic pleasure. His mirrors and crystals create curious volumes that play with light effects to create shadows and reflections, establishing logical confrontations between full and empty spaces.

José Silva Pinto (1959, Lobito, Angola) moved with his family to Portugal in 1975. He attended high school in Lisbon, and after reaching adulthood, began a circuit of travels, always under the pretext of education and work: in Zurich, he studied biotechnology; in the Netherlands, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry; and he traveled through the former USSR, Germany, France, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Gabon. He returned to Angola in 2000 and has lived in Luanda since then. It was here that he put an end to his professional routines and dedicated himself exclusively to photography. His professional studio, where he works on advertising projects, enables him to finance long work-related trips abroad.

José Maria Fernandes Marques (1939, Guimarães) moved to Lisbon in 1958, where he studied painting and drawing with Teresa de Sousa and Gil Teixeira Lopes. He later studied engraving at the Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses, meeting artists like Hogan, Júlio Pomar, and Almada Negreiros. In 1961, he moved to Paris, where he was influenced by Fauvism, and adopted the pseudonym José de Guimarães. He traveled to Italy and Munich, where he encountered the works of Michelangelo, Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico, and the Bauhaus movement. In 1967, he served in Angola, where he developed an interest in African art and collage. After returning to Portugal in 1974, he began sculpting in 1980 and continued to explore new artistic realities, influenced by his travels to Japan, China, Mexico, and Tunisia.