Órbitas, at the PLMJ Foundation

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DATE

16 Oct 2025

AUTHOR

João Pedro Soares

Órbitas, at the PLMJ Foundation

AUTHOR

João Pedro Soares

Holding an extensive collection of Portuguese photography, the PLMJ Foundation is launching a new initiative to open up its collection to the outside world in a gesture of solidarity and sharing with the general public. As a result of this intention and a desire to highlight new developments in contemporary Portuguese photography, a partnership with Atelier de Lisboa has led to the exhibition Órbitas (Orbits), curated by Pedro Alfacinha.

As Eduardo Nogueira Pinto, executive president of the PLMJ Foundation, points out:

“It is with great satisfaction that for the first time the PLMJ Foundation opens its exhibition space in Lisbon to a project outside its usual program. True to our mission of supporting Portuguese-speaking artists and initiatives, we enthusiastically welcome the Atelier de Lisboa photography students, supporting the community by encouraging artistic creation. We were particularly pleased to support the installation and ongoing exhibition of Órbitas, which has seen dozens of visitors since it opened”.

In fact, in a space of refined aesthetics, Órbitas gathers an immediate impact, in immaculately displayed photographs, with a production and curatorship of high technical rigor, enhancing the immediate quality of the presented visual work. Comprising works by seven artists, culminating in a year of research and practice at the Lisbon Atelier, Órbitas raises a series of questions that are articulated precisely in a constellation of concerns, interests, and obsessions that orbit around a common center, based on a visible search for a refinement of the artistic gaze. This is where Barthes' idea of the unpretentious photographic punctum can be seen.

With her Dissociações series, Alexandra Cunha-Vaz offers us a glimpse into her daily life, the shedding of an addiction, and inner transformation. Using an unexpected device, a candid visual atlas emerges in a testimony of overcoming adversity. Next comes Rosário Oliveira, who frames the forest through careful low-angle shots, followed by an attentive polyptych of the sea breaking on a beach. In this series entitled Refugium natura, the gaze lingers on the details and rhythms that escape us, from treetops to pebbles rolled by the sand. Gonçalo C. Silva, with Ciclone, is also inspired by the force of nature, although he takes his cue from an oneiric representation of a local myth. Through an allegorical composition, he recreates the narrative around a woman who is thrown from one village to another by the rush of the winds.

Peripheral issues are also addressed, with Teresa Júdice da Costa exploring routines and bus routes around the city in 720. Ideas of intimacy and a feminine universe stand out in a series of photographs orchestrated in an original mise en abyme, where mirror games and double exposures formalize everyday life: waiting, contemplation, tiredness, and transience in places that are often invisible for being so familiar. Miguel Fernandes Duarte joins in with Periférico, highlighting the non-places underlying the surroundings of Lisbon airport. Unexpected compositions and discreet rhymes result in a series marked by an unusual, hypnotic gaze, where the scale of the airport becomes small when juxtaposed with the interest that its surroundings trigger.

Finally, João Xenico and Austėja Ščiavinskaitė offer photographic experimentalism of outstanding precision. With Jardim das Delícias, Xenico creates a triptych video installation, reimagining Bosch's famous painting. It all starts with a garden photo, where huge enlargements—which were then filmed—create a monstrous, dystopian effect, where references dissolve and creatures come to life. Ščiavinskaitė, on the other hand, pulls off the surprising feat of finding liquidity in a marble workshop. The plastic compositions cause the rock-like hardness to be broken by watery forms, crystallizations, and unexpected viscosities.

On display at the PLMJ Foundation until October 25, this is an opportunity to discover some of the emerging and contemporary photography currently taking place in Portugal. Admission is free, but you must book in advance by emailing fundacaoplmj@plmj.pt

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