Pláka Platform

Agar M. Ledo Arias is an art historian and curator. She currently works at the Pontevedra International Art Biennial, where she was the associate curator of the 32(nd) edition in 2025. Between 2019 and 2022, she was a curator and acquisitions consultant in the Collections Department at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. She was part of the curatorial team for the exhibition Vasos Comunicantes: Colección 1881–2021. Colección 1881–2021. From 2006 to 2018, she was the exhibitions director at MARCO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo. She holds Master’s degrees in Museology from the University of Alcalá and in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has undertaken research residencies at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Le Consortium, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and Independent Curators International. Early in her career, she worked at the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art (1998–2004) and collaborated with the Seville International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2004) and the Luis Seoane Foundation (2005). She is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art and the Executive Board of ICOM Spain.

Luís Sousa Ferreira is currently Assistant Artistic Director at the D. Maria II National Theatre, focusing particularly on the Odisseia Nacional project. Alongside his professional activities, he teaches on the Cultural Programming and Production course at ESAD in Caldas da Rainha and is the artistic director of the Aldear project, which covers the 11 municipalities of the Douro, Tâmega and Sousa region. In 2022, he founded the Riscado company, which specialises in consultancy, programming and creating projects for territorial cohesion and cultural participation. From 2016 to 2022, he was the founder and director of 23 Milhas, a cultural project uniting the four spaces of the municipality of Ílhavo. From 2019 to 2020, he was an artistic consultant on the Braga 2027 bid. He founded and directed the BONS SONS festival from 2006 to 2019 and was the curator of Caminhos do Médio Tejo, a cultural network programme integrating 13 municipalities, from 2016 to 2018. After graduating from ESAD.CR with a degree in Industrial Design, he coordinated production and development at Experimentadesign from 2013 to 2015, having worked as a producer and designer there since 2009. From 2006 to 2009, he worked at the Centre for the Study of New Artistic Trends (CENTA) as a cultural producer. From 1998 to 2016, he was an association leader at the SCOCS cultural association, and he was also the co-founder of the Coletivo‐mente collective. He is a regular columnist for Gerador magazine and Comunidade Cultura e Arte.

Valentín Roma is an art historian and writer. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Southampton, was chief curator at MACBA, and has directed La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona since 2016. There, he has curated exhibitions on artists such as Alexander Kluge, Paula Rego, Susan Sontag, Barbara Hammer, and the Exit Photography Group. He was responsible for Catalonia’s first pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 and has developed curatorial projects for national and international institutions, including the Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Matucana 100 in Santiago de Chile, the Spanish Cultural Centre in Argentina, the University of Navarra Museum, the ICO Museum in Madrid and the Mapfre Foundation. He is also the author of a trilogy of novels: El enfermero de Lenin (Lenin’s Nurse, 2017), Retrato del futbolista adolescente (Portrait of a Teenage Footballer, 2019), and El capitalista simbólico (The Symbolic Capitalist, 2022). All three novels were published by Periférica. He is also the author of the essays Rostros (2011, Periférica) and Diecinueve apagones y un destello (2020, Arcadia). Alongside Paul B. Preciado, Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler, he won the International Association of Art Critics – AICA Deutschland prize for the best exhibition of 2015 for curating Die Bestie und ihr Souverän.

José Pina holds a Master’s degree in Cities and Urban Cultures and has a professional background in cultural programming and management across various artistic venues and projects. These include the António Lamoso Cinema Theatre, the Ílhavo Cultural Centre, the Aveirense Theatre, the Imaginarius International Street Theatre Festival, the Rádio Faneca Festival, the Festival dos Canais, the Prisma/Art Light Tech and the Criatech Digital Creativity and Technology Festival. He coordinated Aveiro 2027’s bid to become the European Capital of Culture and was the director and programmer of Aveiro 2024’s bid to become the Portuguese Capital of Culture. He is also vice-president of the Professional Association of Cultural Programmers.

Júlia Rebouças is a curator, researcher and museum manager. She has worked on cultural projects and in museums, focusing on governance, management and programme content. She has been the artistic director of the Inhotim Institute in Brazil since 2023, having previously worked there as a curator from 2007 to 2015. From 2021 to 2023, she was the artistic director at the Francisco Brennand Workshop in Recife, Brazil. In 2022, she organised the Um século de agora (A Century from Now) exhibition at Itaú Cultural, which she co-curated with Naine Terena and Luciara Ribeiro. She was a curatorial consultant for the 59th Venice Biennale, ‘The Milk of Dreams’, curated by Cecilia Alemani, which took place in 2022. She curated the 36th Panorama of Brazilian Art: Sertão at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo in 2019. Also in 2019, she was the artistic director and co-curator, alongside Diego Matos, of the exhibition Entrevendo, a poetic and historical anthology of Cildo Meireles’ work, at Sesc Pompeia in São Paulo. She co-curated the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, Incerteza Viva, in 2016. She was assistant curator of the 9th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre in 2013. She has also carried out several independent curatorial projects. She has extensive editorial experience, having organised and edited books, as well as contributing as an author to several titles.

Manuel Borja-Villel is an art historian who graduated from the universities of Valencia, Yale, and New York. He went on to become one of the most internationally recognised museum directors, successively directing the Fundació Tàpies (1989–1998) and MACBA (1998–2007) in Barcelona, and the Reina Sofía Museum (2008–2023) in Madrid. In 2023, he received the Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence. He is the author of Magnetic Fields. Writings on Art and Politics (2020), as well as Conversations with Manuel Borja-Villel (2015), co-authored with Marcelo Expósito.