Programme 2023
The programme of the Galeria Municipal do Porto for 2023 unfolds along two main axes.
The first has the mission of investigating, articulating and exposing, through contemporary art, the deep relationship that exists in Porto between city and natural environment, urban and rural context, ecology and creativity, imagining the city as an epicentre, from which artistic identity and contemporary creative imaginaries are investigated, as well as the areas of friction and tension and struggle of a territory that exists beyond the known borders between Portugal and Spain, which is the Iberian Atlantic Northwest. It will take the form of two exhibitions: Compulsive Desires, which considers the issues of lithium extraction between nature and economy in the territory of the Northern Iberian Peninsula, and The Sylvan and Harsh North, which will look at rural and mythological imaginaries created by young artists between Northern Portugal and Galicia.
The second axis aims to reveal the way in which the artistic life of Porto exists in dialogue and interchange with a vibrant and up-to-date international context, realising its cosmopolitan vocation and aspiration through bridging initiatives such as exhibitions, residencies, festivals, support for internationalisation. Examples of this are the Duet exhibition — a dialogue between Maria Paz and Joan Jonas — and the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize exhibition, now in its third edition and with a new format.
The first has the mission of investigating, articulating and exposing, through contemporary art, the deep relationship that exists in Porto between city and natural environment, urban and rural context, ecology and creativity, imagining the city as an epicentre, from which artistic identity and contemporary creative imaginaries are investigated, as well as the areas of friction and tension and struggle of a territory that exists beyond the known borders between Portugal and Spain, which is the Iberian Atlantic Northwest. It will take the form of two exhibitions: Compulsive Desires, which considers the issues of lithium extraction between nature and economy in the territory of the Northern Iberian Peninsula, and The Sylvan and Harsh North, which will look at rural and mythological imaginaries created by young artists between Northern Portugal and Galicia.
The second axis aims to reveal the way in which the artistic life of Porto exists in dialogue and interchange with a vibrant and up-to-date international context, realising its cosmopolitan vocation and aspiration through bridging initiatives such as exhibitions, residencies, festivals, support for internationalisation. Examples of this are the Duet exhibition — a dialogue between Maria Paz and Joan Jonas — and the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize exhibition, now in its third edition and with a new format.
25.03 - 28.05.2023
Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains
Compulsive Desires — On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains addressed the entanglement between extractivism and exhaustion, productivity and burn-out, across scales. Curated by Marina Otero Verzier, the exhibition tooked as its starting point the ongoing lithium extraction plans in the North of Portugal and the struggles sustained by local communities for their lives and rights. Battles that emphasize how, in what has been described as "green colonialism", the development of the "renewable energy futures", too often involves the dispossession of communities and degradation of ecosystems.
Whereas the mining industry — and capitalism cravings — subjugates and exploits the mountain and its inhabitants treating them as resources to be extracted, the violence is turned into a force for survival for these communities through collective infrastructures and embodied rituals. If mining results in social, ecological, and mental breakdown, these practices, alongside artistic expressions, break social order to create counter worlds merging the individual and the collective, the ancestral realm and future generations, the human and more-than-human, and unleashing alternative understanding of energy.
May - November 2023
Music Between Companion Species
Music between Companion Species is a series of concerts conceived and performed for and with dogs, their human companions and other more-than-human presences who may join these sessions. Inspired by Donna J. Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto and by cientific studies about dog’s preferences for sound and music, the concerts will take into account these animals’ unique sensibilities and hearing capabilities. Curated by Lovers & Lollypops.
17.06 – 27.08.2023
Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize
Created by the City Council as a tribute to the late Councillor for Culture Paulo Cunha e Silva (1962 – 2015), a central figure for the city’s artistic life, the award, held every two years in Porto, recognises the talent of new generations of national and international artists.
This year’s edition underlines the Prize’s commitment to fostering creation and cultural exchange by establishing a partnership with three world-recognised residency programmes: Arquipélago Centro de Artes in S. Miguel, Azores, Cove Park, on Scotland’s west coast, and Pivô, in São Paulo, will all host one of the nominated artists, appointed by a jury of three members.
The Nominators for the 2023 edition of the Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize are: artist Ângela Ferreira, Jan van Eyck Academie Director Hicham Khalidi, and cultural programmer Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura.
With: Euridice Zaituna Kala, Marilú Mapengo Námoda and Luis M. S, Santos (nominated by Ângela Ferreira); Rouzbeh Akhbari, Kent Chan and Hira Nabi (nominated by Hicham Khalidi) and Maren Karlson, Malik Nashad Sharpe (Marikiscrycrycry) and Eve Stainton (nominated by Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura).
16.09 – 19.11.2023
Duet – Maria Paz and Joan Jonas
Duet is an invitation for two artists to share an exhibition space. It started as a proposal for a young artist from Porto to think of an artist they would like to share an exhibition with. Recalling the impact of her survey show at the Serralves Museum, Maria Paz invited Joan Jonas to share the exhibition space of the Galeria Municipal do Porto. In this transatlantic exchange of generations, the two artists will reveal their common investigations of forms, colours and materials. Curated by Filipa Ramos.
09.12.2023 – 10.03.2024
The Sylvan and Harsh North
What are the meteorological patterns, the myths and stories, the rhythms, colours and shapes, the human and nonhuman inhabitants that make up the Iberian Northwest, in its reality and fiction?
Wondering about the rituals and expressive modes of people, animals, plants, elements and minerals, we went looking for the roots, terminations and tentacles of the Iberian Northwest, trying to locate the places where they might reside. In doing so, we considered the past but above all faced the present-future of these concrete and imagined spaces between seas, woods and settlements. The Sylvan and Harsh North is an exhibition that follows roads and lines of intensity, centrifugal forces that take us beyond Porto, towards those supposed margins where permutations erupt, to discover and share the references, stories, words and connections to these places with a long past and an even longer future. Curated by Filipa Ramos and Juan Luis Toboso.