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New exhibition cycle at the Galeria Municipal do Porto
On 15 November, three exhibitions opened simultaneously at the Municipal Gallery of Porto: Estado de espírito by Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela, curated by João Laia, Recursões: uma cartografia de territórios inacabados, curated by Kiluanji Kia Henda and Margarida Waco with works by Flávio Cardoso, Lilianne Kiame and Raul Jorge Gourgel, and Aprender a ensinar, ensinar a aprender by Elvira Leite, curated by Matilde Seabra. Continuing the space's coordinated programme, the exhibitions reiterate an interest in combining the contemporary artistic landscape with the development of alternative epistemologies, as well as experimentation promoted by the space on floor -1.
In this sense, Elvira Leite's exhibition promotes an encounter that goes beyond the mere display of works and develops in accordance with the practice and importance of the artist in question. Thus, the exhibition unfolds in a work in which the space resembles her studio, combining the presentation of works, mostly paintings, with an archive of letters, photographs and records that document and contextualise Elvira Leite's life and practice in a way that goes beyond her artistic production alone. In this way, anchoring her work in teaching and pedagogy, the exhibition is developed so that its configuration, between 16 December and 16 January, frees up space for the activation of the workshops “O Espaço Entre” (The Space Between), with Cristina Camargo and mediation teams from BOA Arts, PING!/GMP and Porto Municipal Libraries. The development of this space thus articulates the artist's own approach, inserting her activity and her concerns with the relationship between artistic practice and teaching into the exhibition design itself.
On the first floor, the exhibition focuses on the dialogue between the work of Kiluanji Kia Henda and the works of three artists. Based on the notion of recursivity, it points to production that is always aided by a past that constructs it. This mechanism becomes evident both in the articulation of the artistic works, in the sense of combining different approaches, and in the very way of dealing with the territory. In this sense, the recursion developed here refers to a ‘repetition of difference’, similar to that of Deleuze, in which ‘difference inhabits repetition. On the one hand, as if in length, difference makes us move from one order of repetition to another: from instantaneous repetition, which dissolves into itself, to repetition, actively represented...’1. The exhibition thus presents, through a multiplicity of proposals – sculpture, films, engravings, architecture – a construction project that incorporates the defeat of modernity as an opening to a new relationship with time and the past. In contrast to Western technological modernity, the pieces combine the Angolan culture of the artists with the need to represent ruin, instability and the unknown as crucial to the construction of any idea of the future.
Operating with an equally challenging attitude towards the scientific and technological imperialism of capitalist and modern society, the ground floor is occupied by a retrospective exhibition by the duo Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela. Bringing together a selection of more and less recent works, it combines the artists' work in all its variety, with a strong presence of film and video, but also drawing and sculpture. Through different techniques, their work is continuously inserted into a close relationship with ancestry and natural space, where material production is always accompanied by transparency and simplicity of means. In this sense, references to customs and rituals emerge at different moments, referring to a notion of community, constructed through stories and fables that define the dialogue between nature and culture. Thus, pieces such as Adoração ao Sol and Quase Lua em Trânsito incorporate the creation of devices and the transmutation of light as methods of ritualistic invasion of the exhibition space itself, which becomes a dynamic environment. On the other hand, accompanying these moments that incorporate the very action of ritual in space, more representative moments are also present in the various films that occupy the exhibition. Works such as Livro da Seda – Diabretes, Domesticar há Milénios, Águas e Espelhos and Subir e Sumir present intimate portraits of moments in which everyday life is combined with the dreamlike and the sensitive, in proximity to the natural space. In this sense, the entire exhibition seems to be situated in this invocation of a space where the fantastical mixes with the real, and sensitivity and intimacy arise from the details of everyday life. Amidst the shadow that dominates the space, we find snippets of moments and contacts that, as in an immersive dream, restore a relationship between the human and the technical - not stripped of attention to sensitive detail, but presented in terms of a delicate contact with a state of mind.
The three exhibitions on display at the Galeria Municipal do Porto can be visited until 15 February 2026.
1 Deleuze, G. (2000). Diferença e Repetição, p. 149-150. Free Translation.
BIOGRAPHY
Mariana Machado (2000) was born in Porto and studied Cinema at Escola das Artes - Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She is currently studying for a Master's Degree in Digital and Sound Arts, also at Escola das Artes. She is an artist and researcher, interested above all in manifestations that articulate the moving image in a context between cinema and contemporary art, as well as the artistic potential of new technologies and their articulations with other materialities.
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