By Anaïs Castro
From late January to early April 2025, I had the privilege of participating in a residency with AiR351 and CAC Torres Vedras, an experience that allowed me to immerse myself in Portugal’s contemporary art scene. My research focused on the intersections between the country’s cultural and historical specificities and broader global discourses. While the residency initially emerged as a professional opportunity, it also held deep personal significance. My father left Portugal in 1976, just two years after the Carnation Revolution, and although I have always felt a sense of belonging to his homeland, my ties to it had remained largely personal and unarticulated in a professional context. The residency thus became a means of grounding—an opportunity to forge a meaningful connection with the country of my father through the lens of my own practice. At the core of my project was a conceptual framework I describe as “methodological collectivism”—a curatorial orientation that privileges collaboration not just as a strategy but as a critical lens. This approach guided my interactions with artists, curators, writers and cultural workers throughout Portugal, treating the residency as a living laboratory for exchange, dialogue, and mutual discovery.
Francis Alÿs, Children’s Game, Serralves
Portugal’s contemporary art scene, while modest in scale, is remarkably vibrant, sustained by a constellation of institutional, artist-run, and independent spaces. Among its leading institutions, Serralves in Porto, stands out for its thoughtful programming. During my visit, it presented a dynamic series of solo exhibitions by the American painter Avery Singer, the Lebanese conceptualist Mounira Al Sol, the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa, and by the Belgian Francis Alÿs — testifying to the institution’s curatorial range, balancing internationally renowned artists with robust representation of Portuguese voices across both temporary exhibitions and their permanent collection.
In Lisbon, the recently reopened Centro de Arte Moderna – Gulbenkian has quickly established itself as a vital space for critical engagement. Its programming, which spans exhibitions, performances, talks, and public events, fosters an active dialogue between local and global contexts. During a conversation with co-director Ana Botella, she described a mission grounded in community engagement, framing the institution as a civic platform as much as an art venue. The exhibitions reflected this ethos. On view was three powerful solo exhibitions by Serra Leonian artist Julianknxx, by Portuguese Diana Policarpo and Portuguese-Angolan Tristany Mundu. Together, the three exhibitions showed the entanglement of diverse themes such migration and diasporic memory, ecological concerns, housing precarity, racial inequality, etc. Meanwhile, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea e Centro de Arquitetura (MAC/CCB) continues to be a cornerstone of the city’s cultural landscape. With the recent appointment of Spanish art historian and curator Nuria Enguita as artistic director, the institution enters an exciting new chapter. Its stewardship of the significant Berardo Collection promises to yield bold and imaginative presentations, expanding the possibilities for how this important collection can be reinterpreted in the years to come.
Julianknxxx, Chorus, CAM – Gulbenkian
Diana Policarpo, Ciguatera, Ocean Space
Yet Portugal’s most radical energies often thrive beyond its major institutions. Independent and experimental platforms continue to redefine what cultural infrastructure can be. In Lisbon, Kunsthalle Lissabon—founded in 2009 by curators Luís Silva and João Mourão—remains a beacon of curatorial innovation. Inspired by the non-collecting Kunsthalle model, it challenges prevailing exhibition frameworks across Europe and assert an agile, exhibition-driven curatorial methodology. Therein lies its fundamental tension and paradox, which has fueled its mission over the past 15 years. Nowadays, Silva and Mourão have emerged as key figures in the Portuguese and international art scenes, curating the Portugal Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and contributing to major institutions across Europe. As their own careers evolve, so too does the mission of Kunsthalle Lissabon, which continues to explore its potential as a curator-run organization and its responsibilities within a shifting cultural landscape.
Lou Vives, Kunsthalle Lissabon
In Torres Vedras, Centro de Arte e Criatividade occupies a uniquely hybrid position. Primarily known as the home of the city’s historic Carnival—an exuberant festival with roots in the 16th century—the institution blends cultural heritage with contemporary production. Situated in a converted slaughterhouse redesigned by architect José Simões Neves, the center includes a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Carnival, while also offering residency opportunities and supporting projects that explore themes of performance, theatricality, and festive ritual.
Further afield, new models are emerging. In Viseu, the initiative Venha a nós a boa morte (V𝘕𝘉𝘔 arte contemporânea) presents an innovative model for regional engagement. In partnership with the city, VNBM occupies a vacant storefront in the town center where it hosts four exhibitions per year until 2027. Following each exhibition, a work is moved into a growing, itinerant collection group exhibition relocated to a secondary venue down the street. This cumulative process will culminate in a comprehensive group show and a publication tracing the five-year arc of the project. VNBM is currently the only independent and professional contemporary art initiative in the region, playing a vital role in the decentralization of cultural production and the affirmation of Viseu as a site of critical reflection.
Also in Viseu, A MAIOR—a project by artist Bruno Zhu— inhabits an entirely different register. Tucked within his parents’ general store, A Maior offers an understated but conceptually rich intervention into a commercial space. The installations are subtle, embedded in the shop’s everyday rhythms, they challenge the hierarchies of display. During my visit, wall-based sculptures by Anna Franceschini and Davide Stucchi were discreetly installed among the store’s dense inventory, engaging with themes of concealment, objecthood, and the everyday. With no formal signage or demarcation, the project invites discovery, reframing retail space as an exhibition platform.
Anna Franceschini and Davide Stucchi, A MAIOR
In the small town of Chamusca, Consultório offers yet another singular curatorial proposition. Established in 2023 by André Escarameia, the space—adjacent to his father’s medical practice—is only open to the public when the doctor is in session, or by appointment. It functions both as a gallery and a publishing house for artist multiples and editions, all self-produced by Escarameia. During my visit, an evocative solo show by Bruno Silva (Flor da Pele) featured translucent resin boxes filled with objects—clocks, cocktail glasses, artificial flowers— served as conduits for exploring digestion as a philosophical act: how we internalize, transform, and re-express the world and how the world in turn, changes us. A poem, tattooed directly onto the wall, echoed this theme: de fora / para dentro / rasgão / fenda / de uma coisa para outra / de uma outra coisa / água na boca
Bruno Silva, Consultório
In Lisbon, the municipal galleries continue to support ambitious programming. While there, I encountered Manuel Santos Maia’s exhibition Nampula Macua Socialismo at Galeria Quadrum, curated by João Sousa Cardoso. The show revisited Santos Maia’s family history in Mozambique—where he was born in 1970—through a constellation of mementos, crafted objects, and archival materials. The affective and personal nature of the exhibition resonated with broader postcolonial discourses, raising complex questions about memory, displacement, and the politics of historical narration.
In Porto, the city’s respected Galeria Municipal, now under the direction of João Laia, maintains a strong commitment to interdisciplinary and socially relevant practices, though I unfortunately missed its most recent exhibitions, which opened just after I left the city. One of the shows on view was that of Monica de Miranda, who I had the pleasure of meeting while in Lisbon, while she was preparing Depth of Field at GMP. The Portuguese-Angolan artist who was the latest to represent Portugal at the 60th Venice Biennale, utilized the exhibition space as a set and inviting collaborators, musicians, actors, poets, philosophers, etc to engage the public across questions that animate her practice, creating an exhibition experience that is unfixed, continually being activated, and enliven. Her work engages speculative fiction and Afro-surrealism to interrogate the legacies of colonialism and migration, reimagining geographies and timelines to create spaces for healing, resistance, and belonging.
Manuel Santos Maia, Galeria Quadrum
Not far away, in São João da Madeira, Centro de Arte Oliva operates as the city’s main contemporary art space. It houses two significant collections on loan, The Norlinda and José Lima Modern and Contemporary Art Collection includes over a thousand artworks by Portuguese and international artists. The Treger Saint Silvestre Art Brut Collection includes approximately 1,500 artworks by some 250 outsider artists. Despite their markedly different orientation, the two collections share a unique significance in the Portuguese panorama. Alongside the collection, Centro de Arte Oliva hosts temporary exhibitions that fulfill its mission to widen visual arts in Portugal across three main guiding principles: to champion under-recognized or previously unshown artists in Portugal, to foster transdisciplinary approaches across creative fields, and to support the rewriting of art history through a more inclusive lens. During my visit, a group exhibition curated by Sara Castelo Branco titled After Smoke Mirror took up the upper floor. Through the work of ten artists, the exhibition centred around an exploration of spiritual and mystic community practices as a potential reimagining of social and ecological interactions.
After Smoke Mirror, Centro de Arte Oliva
During my ten-week residency in Portugal, my main focus was connecting with artists through studio visits. Over the course of the program, I met about forty artists—both established and emerging—working across a wide range of disciplines. Some of the artists I met were shortlisted for the 15th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award, a significant prize for emerging talent in Portugal. Among them were Inês Brites, Alice dos Reis, and Maja Escher—three remarkable artists whose distinctive visual languages is featured currently in an exhibition at the Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia (MAAT). In addition to these visits, I was invited to serve as a guest curator for a session with graduate students in the Visual Arts Master’s program at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design (ESAD), Politécnico de Leiria, in Caldas da Rainha. This opportunity allowed me to engage critically with the students’ work, offering individualized feedback, relevant references, and curatorial insight that supported their ongoing development as artists.
Early in the residency, during one of my first studio visits, Miguel Ferrão from the duo Musa paradisiaca casually remarked that Portuguese artists are “quite romantic.” At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But later, during a conversation with Luís Silva of Kunsthalle Lissabon at an exhibition opening, I brought it up again. What began as a passing comment evolved into a spirited discussion, revealing a compelling pattern in the local artistic landscape. The observation appeared to resonate most strongly in the work of male artists such as Francisco Tropa, André Romão, Musa Paradisiaca, and Gabriel Abrantes— though certainly Isabel Cordovil would fit into this group. The term “romantic” if I understood it properly, referred to practices that often lean into the poetic, the mythical, and the symbolic. These works, knowingly or not, seemed to channel a certain melancholic sensibility, a kind of aesthetic romanticism deeply embedded in Portuguese cultural identity, perhaps best encapsulated by the notion of saudade—a word often translated as a deep, nostalgic longing—and the plaintive tones of fado.
André Romão
Gabriel Abrantes
But this poetic sensibility wasn’t evenly distributed. As I continued my visits, I noticed many women and queer artists I met worked through a more structural critique. Their practices examined systems—economic, spatial, archival, ecological—and questioned how they shape experience. Fernanda Fragateiro’s sculptural interventions, Mónica de Miranda’s speculative cartographies, Belén Uriel’s material translations, or Carla Filipe’s punk aesthetic all reflected a drive to dismantle inherited frameworks. This divergence felt instructive. In a culture steeped in imperial nostalgia, perhaps those excluded from its privileges are more attuned to its ruptures—and more inclined to imagine other ways forward.
Fernanda Fragateiro
Carla Filipe
This critical shift crystallized through a new strand of research that unfolded during my residency: the entanglement between botany and Portugal’s colonial history, during the 17th and 18th centuries, when imperial expansion was closely linked to the global circulation of plant species and the institutionalization of botanical science.
A significant moment in this exploration was my participation in Invasive Species?, a transdisciplinary, critical and collective investigation on migrating knowledge conceived and led by Avital Barak and organized and commissioned by AiR 351 as part of DGARTES Apoio Sustentado program. This program brought together scholars and artists to examine ecological crises, colonial legacies, migratory knowledge, and the rise of digital nomadism. The two sessions I attended offered a particularly enriching lens through which to understand these themes. Historian Marta Macedo presented her research on plantation economies in São Tomé, while biologist Elizabete Marchante spoke about the ecological consequences of invasive species in Portugal—species that arrived through colonial trade and continue to reshape local ecosystems.
This research thread resonated deeply with many of my studio visits. I met several artists whose work engages with the symbolic, material, and political dimensions of plant life, and its relationship to memory, territory, and postcolonial critique. Mónica de Miranda and Manuel Santos Maia, for example, use gardens and flora as metaphors for identity, displacement, and re-rooting, while artists such as Vasco Araújo, Márcio Carvalho, Gabriela Albergaria, and Diana Policarpo interrogate how natural environments are shaped by systems of classification, surveillance, and territorial control. Through these diverse practices, a nuanced and timely discourse is emerging— one that maps the entanglements of empire, environment, and epistemology.
Mónica de Miranda
Vasco Araújo
As I delve deeper into this line of research, I’m increasingly interested in how contemporary artists use plants, flowers, and organic materials not merely as symbols, but as critical agents. This work connects meaningfully to the legacies of Arte Povera and Land Art—movements that, in the 1960s and ’70s, challenged the boundaries of sculpture by incorporating living and ephemeral materials. These practices also raise important curatorial questions: What does it mean to exhibit living organisms within museum infrastructures designed for permanence and preservation? What ethical and logistical responsibilities do institutions bear when they become custodians of organic matter? And how can the curatorial treatment of botanical materials reflect the critical concerns embedded in the artworks themselves?
These are questions I carry forward. My residency in Portugal was not just a period of research—it was a season of germination. Ideas seeded through conversations, readings, studio visits, and unexpected encounters are now beginning to root. What grows from here remains to be seen. But I return with a renewed sense of purpose and an expanded curatorial toolkit—one shaped by the rhythms of place, the wisdom of plants, and the generative mess of collective thinking.
Anaïs Castro is a curator and writer based in New York and Montreal. Over the past 15 years, she has held positions at various institutions including, the National Gallery of Canada, Arsenal Contemporary Art, Art Mûr, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Stills – Scotland’s Centre for Photography. She is an editorial member of Daily Lazy and publishes regularly with various publications.