Umbigo #92 begins the editorial plan for 2025 with the theme of Intimacy, exploring the small gestures of daily life, the private choreography of bodies, and the new forms of connections and relationships.

The covers highlight the work of Júlia Ventura (profile by Maria Inês Augusto), with a photography work that resists interpretation and the usual taxonomic classifications of art; and the work of Manuel Solano, who, in the interview conducted by Umbigo, drives us through her life and the challenging pictorial practice the came up with.

The curatorial project by Delfim Sardo is designed to function as an exhibition composed of notes, photographs, and references to art and literature, featuring the graphic design of Pedro Falcão. In the magazine’s pages, you may find a private archive now accessible to everyone, organized in line with the magazine’s theme.

Amongst the visual essays and the commissioned projects, the participation of Inês Zenha, Eduardo Fonseca e Silva, Guilherme Figueiredo (Interchanges Project, FLAD) and Mafalda Santos (Drawing Project, FCC).

Aires de Gameiro opens Landscapes, a project that dwells on naturalistic images of the past and the so-called invention of the landscape, away from home and within a socio-political framework oriented towards infinite mobilization.

Inside you can also read p. feijó’s philosophical dialogue on intimacy; Renny Pritikin’s profile on Jona Frank and the turbulent relationship between mother and daughter; Leonor Nazaré’s essay on Gabriel Abrantes’s animations documenting married and family life; Laila Algaves Nuñez’s essay on intimacy without touch; and Variable Name’s report on the traumas, wounds and repair attempts during the war in Ukraine.

Orsola Vannocci Bonsi interviews choreographer Michelle Rizzo and Mattia Tosti, Agnes Questionmark.

Rui Moreira is the artist invited to the MAAT’s extension after his big retrospective Transe, curated by João Pinharanda, who reviews Moreira’s 20-year-old obsession with drawing. Paulo Mendes celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April—the year marking the first Portuguese democratic elections in 1975. Lastly, the extension with Brotéria proposes a new regard through José Pedro Cortes’s photo essays, documenting gestures, bodies, and gazes.

You can also find the usual sections: Conversation Piece, by João Silvério, which highlights the works of João Cutileiro and José Chambel featured in the PLMJ Foundation collection; Mixed media on paper, by Luísa Salvador, on the fruitful but daunting insomnias of Louise Bourgeois; and Deep Learning, featuring books by Marianne Brooks, Intervals, and Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals.

Diogo Nogueira is the artist featured in the UmbigoLAB section, with a profile by Frederico Vicente, and the poem is authored by Tomás Gorjão.

On the back cover, you may find the work of Candela Capitán, SOLAS, at Espace Niemeyer, in Paris, during the programme curated by Kaleidoscope and GOAT. Capitán’s profile was written by Josseline Black.

Enjoy it!

Umbigo #92 launchings and events:

April 12th, at PORTA33, in Funchal, in partnership with Chain Reaction, at 5:30 pm.

April 19th, at the OSTRA practice space, in Lisbon, with the opening of 975, curated by Tiny Art Gallery, at 5 pm.
From May 29th to June 1st at ARCOlisboa

June 7th, Braga, We Are All Captains Exhibition – Braga Portuguese Capital of Culture

From June 12th to 15th, at Miss Read in Berlin