Exhibitions

Cidade de Protesto

Cidade de Protesto (City of Protest) is a collection of images captured during various demonstrations that took place in the city of Porto since March 10, 2024.

Artist/Curator: Luísa Fernandes is a Portuguese artist, born in Porto in 1996. She studied Photography at the Portuguese Institute of Photography in Porto and holds a Master’s degree in Photography from the School of Arts of the Catholic University of Portugal. Her first solo exhibition took place at Livraria Aberta, in Porto, in May 2024.

“When I look into Luísa’s eyes, there is a lot of irreverence that becomes immediately apparent, a straightforwardness that her voice cannot contain. The furrowed brow that accompanies her verbal discourse is comparable to her smile behind the camera. When observed through Luísa’s lenses, the feeling I get is that I could not be more stripped of any social construction. Looking at myself through her photographs is the rawest form I could ever imagine — it’s not easy to look at myself, but she sees me and represents me exactly as I am, as I feel in the precise moment of the click.” (C. Costa)

Em novembro, é de abril que me lembro

Fifty years ago, the fascist government had already fallen. Demonstrations, meetings, assemblies, strikes took place, many pamphlets and poems were written, and walls were painted with rage and the deepest desire for freedom. The year 2024 was marked by countless stories from those who made the Revolution. Throughout the year, carnations were proudly worn in lapels, inspired new songs, freshly painted on school walls, and brought thousands together in protests for housing rights, against Portuguese fascist and racist movements, and in feminist and LGBTQIA+ marches. At the invitation of the organizing committee of the IX International Congress in Cultural Studies: Cultures, Activisms, and Cultural Changes, we have organized this collective exhibition, bringing together friends to tell a story. In 2022, we occupied three floors of Galeria Geraldes da Silva in Porto with A Festival, proposing an encounter between artists, collectives, and associations to celebrate Existence, Transgression, and Struggle. The struggle born from these encounters allows us to imagine the possibility of existing in transgression against racist, patriarchal, capitalist, and colonial norms. We bring the stories of the struggles from associations and collectives that are part of our contemporary history. The story we share speaks of the April that began 50 years ago, which November tried to interrupt… but failed to silence us. We are still here because we are the Marias who walk together, sometimes in the jolting resistance to social change and transformation. We are the granddaughters of the Marias who made the Revolution.

Artist/Curator: Feminismos Sobre Rodas. Feminismos Sobre Rodas is a collective and non-profit association that emerged in 2019 with the Rota Feminista project. Operating between Douro and Minho, the collective has developed various political intervention initiatives in public spaces across northern Portugal, with the aim of building affinity networks with feminist associations, migrant communities, LGBTQIA+ collectives and movements, housing rights activists, anti-racist movements, sex worker organizations, among others.

Narrativas de Resistência

This project is part of a book featuring narratives of resistance from individuals who serve as references for minority communities in civil society, placing them in dialogue with the perspectives of academic researchers, whose theories seek to understand these experiences. It presents accounts from civil society to academia and from academia to civil society, aiming to challenge the notion that academia is a closed circuit disconnected from civil society, and to address the difficulties academia faces in communicating knowledge in a simple and accessible way to the broader public.

Artist/Curator: Rosalina Silva discovered her passion for drawing during the pandemic. Using art as a therapeutic outlet, she found an escape from the harsh realities of the world while searching for her artistic identity. Still developing her own style, her focus lies in representing faces, bodies, elements of nature, and the banalities of everyday life, themes that have become recurrent in her work. Rosalina dedicates herself to observing people, portraying them through loose, spontaneous lines without prior planning. With a background in music and theater, she is completing her final year of a Master’s in Information Science, where she aims to continue exploring the world of research, merging her passion for the arts with her academic journey.