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Interview

Marisa Benjamim

(im)possible antidote is a site-specific installation by artist Marisa Benjamim that responds to the layered ecological history of Ernst-Thälmann-Park in Berlin. Once the site of a large municipal gasworks (1873–1981), the soil beneath the park still bears the legacy of industrial activity—cyanides, phenols, and tar remain in the ground despite decades of remediation efforts since the gasworks’ closure. This invisible contamination becomes the starting point for Benjamim’s inquiry.
The artist turns to phytoremediation: the capacity of certain plants to absorb, filter, and transform harmful substances in the soil. Through botanical research, field observation, and material experimentation, Benjamim traces how spontaneous and often overlooked plants naturally emerge in the contaminated soil—resilient organisms with the potential to slowly heal damaged land.
In the exhibition, these plants are collected, pressed, and presented in an installation that blurs the line between scientific archive, ritual gesture, and poetic proposition, reflecting the artist’s interest in empirical knowledge, healing, and care. The work invites viewers to consider what it means to care for polluted ground—not through immediate repair, but through attention, time, and the humble agency of plants.
(im)possible antidote is questioning: how can we create an antidote in impossible times? Perhaps by listening to what still grows. The project reframes these plants as silent activists, proposing a regenerative dialogue between ecological memory and embodied hope.

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Página Pessoal

Jorge Leal

Paisagem, 2024, tinta da China e acrílico em spray sobre papel, 70 x 200 cm

Paisagem, 2024, tinta da China e acrílico em spray sobre papel, 70 x 100 cm

E-mail: joao.marques.studio@gmail.com 

Phone number: +351 963720065

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João Marques

We were here, what a misfortune...#1, part of the series that gives it its title, started, like much of my artistic work, from a walk. In 2025 I finished my master's degree in Painting and so I moved studio and stipulated that, as part of my creative process, it was an absolutely necessary condition to walk from home to the studio (about 5 km) every time I went to work so that the walk would be the start of the artistic work (through reflection, projection and the collection of material or motifs for new works or projects). On the inaugural walk towards the studio, wrapped up in various thoughts, I noticed a 0.33cl plastic bottle from the Fastio brand - the name of the brand is decisive - tucked into the hollow of a large ash tree. Ever since I was a child, I've been confused and repulsed by garbage in nature. That's why I've been picking it up for as long as I can remember. This image of the plastic bottle deliberately placed in the groove of the tree when a garbage can is 50m away disturbed me. This disturbance, combined with the name of the brand itself - Fastio - seemed too ironic to be possible. I removed the bottle from the tree, put it away and, irritated, continued walking towards the studio with the bottle in my hand. I then began to draw part of the trunk of the ash tree with charcoal - the material I usually use to depict trees.
 With some irritation, the paper crumpled and, as I gestured with the charcoal, the leaf itself began to acquire a texture similar to that of the tree trunk. The collected water bottle, dirty and with pieces of styrofoam, was painted red acrylic and glued to the drawing in the exact place of the trunk where it had been. The use of red acrylic is intended to refer to human material, artificially created by humans such as acrylic and plastic, which is almost impossible to disappear in nature, as opposed to the charcoal bars, a biodegradable material, used to represent the tree trunk. The choice of materials is decisive in the sense that it highlights and exaggerates the dichotomy between what is created by human ingenuity, which is mostly polluting and harmful to the balance in nature, and what is produced naturally, without harmful consequences and which allows the natural cycle to continue, which human activity interrupts and prevents.

Texto/relato escrito na obra:
Está tudo ao contrário. Para que não haja dúvidas acerca destes míseros pedaços de papel. Apanhei-
os do chão num dia triste e chuvoso de Outubro. Estavam a voar ao vento, junto da Estação de
Santa-Apolónia, do lado do Rio. Provavelmente voariam em direção ao Tejo. Mais um papel ao mar
- neste caso ao rio -, claro, não faria mal. É só mais um por entre tantos. Também nós somos “só
mais um” por entre tantos outros, tantos biliões de pseudo-macacos, ocupados com frivolidades,
sem qualquer ponta de interesse. Alheados no mundo que julgamos ter criado à medida das nossas
tão honestas necessidades, por ele andamos estragando-o a ele e a nós. Apanhei este panfleto
quando voltava da minha segunda visita às tendas dos sem-abrigo que se instalaram por baixo
daquele viaduto imundo, junto às docas, ao cais de desembarque dos milhares de contentores que
chegam e partem de Lisboa, do mundo e para o mundo, carregados de inutilidades ou de excesso, de
bens que poderiam muito bem ser reduzidos para mais de metade. É tão irónico que todo esse
excesso esteja ali ao lado, onde aquelas pessoas mal arranjam cobertores para se protegerem dos
caprichos das rajadas de vento. Anda bem que agora há aquecimento global, qual aquecedor
desnatural, pelo menos assim estes pobres escravos - alguns, outros já estão completamente
perdidos para o mundo, ou o mundo os perdeu ou eles o mundo, quem sabe, um pouco dos dois -
passam menos frio do que passariam há cem anos atrás, quando era tudo muito mais lento e menos
excessivo. Quando havia menos tralha, menos lixo. Decidi que queria fazer uma série de pinturas/
desenhos sobre aquelas tendas - na verdade, já só são amostras de tendas, são amostras esfarrapadas
do que foram tal como aqueles que nelas vivem. E sondei aquele espaço, aquela espécie de
acampamento durante algum tempo. Atrevi-me a aproximar-me e falei com três pessoas de lá,
jovens homens estrangeiros, simpáticos, que não se importaram que andasse por ali e que fizesse
uns desenhos, no caderno, das suas tendas. Aquilo que mais me impressiona nelas são as suas
formas, o contraste das cores com o betão, os objetos pessoais dessas pessoas: os chinelos velhos e
gastos, as roupas e toalhas sujas espalhadas pelo chão. A imagem que maior marca me deixa, fora os
rostos das pessoas, é a dos cachecóis da seleção de Portugal ostentados à entrada das tendas. O
verde - a esperança - e o vermelho - o sangue -, as quinas e os castelos, a esfera armilar que nos
trouxe aquelas gentes de tão longe para virem morrer ali, no betão sujo e húmido de um viaduto
ruidoso, onde se ouvem ainda perto os chamamentos dos cruzeiros de luxo carregados de gente que
vêm ver a famosa Lisboa, capital do turismo de massas, que se vende por tuta e meia e expulsa as
suas gentes e as troca por hordas de turistas que querem ver o que já não existe. Vende-se o
tradicional por uma encenação. Essa imagem, desses cachecóis, de um país assim, do meu pais, da
cidade onde vivo, que odeio mas ainda amo, marca-me. Marca-me ainda hoje, passados meses
depois de ter apanhado este “We show you Lisbon” que esvoaçava em direção ao Tejo, das suas
águas poluídas. A sensação que tenho é que ninguém quer realmente saber de tudo isto. Enquanto
estava sentado no chão, naquele betão imundo, passaram por mim dezenas de pessoas, ora de
bicicleta ora de trotinete, a correr ou a andar em passo rápido. Olhavam para mim desconfiados e
não olhavam de todo para tudo o resto, para aqueles Seres-Humanos que se arrastavam por ali.
Pergunto-me se quando chegaram a casa dedicaram um pensamento àquelas pessoas, àqueles que
tentaram não olhar e definitivamente não viram. É esta a Lisboa, cidade que toda a gente olha mas
ninguém vê, que temos. We show you Lisbon…
3 de dezembro de 2024

Mátria, [Motherland] 2024. Burnt earth, nails, glass, collage and rope on paper. 50x130 cm.




                                                                                          

The series Cartografias de um incêndio is an experiment and visual reflection on forest fires. Each work in this series is based on a “failed”, poorly cleaned engraving that represents the same view of a national territory that burned down completely in the summer of 2022. Can be seen burned paths and roads.

Divina Terra is an exhibition project that was initially created to occupy two exhibition spaces: the Museum of Natural History and Science of Lisbon and the Alvaiázere Municipal Museum. Due to the formal characteristics of the two installations (created in modules) that make up the exhibition, it can be adapted to various spaces. The starting point for the creation of the exhibition, whose works are created from scratch for this purpose, is the idea of travel. A journey based on the experience of the forest fires that broke out in the district of Leiria and, in particular, in the municipality of Alvaiázere in 2022 and a reflection on matter, land and territory. The two installations that make up the exhibition were conceived as separate works that are simultaneously physically connected to each other and communicate with each other.
The passage through Neste país sem olhos e sem boca (In this country without eyes and mouth) is essential to the experience of Podia ser (Could be). They are different stages of the same path. The act of walking, taking a particular route and experiencing the formal characteristics of the works is therefore fundamental.


The paintings that make up the installation “Neste país sem olhos e sem boca”  were painted with a mixture of burnt earth - collected from burnt forests in the Alvaiázere region in 2022 -, white glue and water. They vary in size, with a height of 2.60 m, a width of 2 mm and various lengths, with the largest pieces being 2.07 m long. They vary in size because this installation will always have to adapt to the exhibition space in which it is installed. 
	The title of the work comes from the poem “Lugar Onde” by Ruy Belo. It's a poem that was striking for the author and, above all, reflects a spirit similar to the one that is intended to emerge in the viewer and that led to the installation. The aim is for the viewer to follow the trail of destruction caused by forest fires through a corridor of large paintings, which is relatively narrow and poorly lit. The only light sources are small spotlights that illuminate the paintings. This corridor of burnt ground, transformed into a painting and lifted off the ground, expresses catastrophic experiences in a country or place that, “without eyes or mouth”, allows itself to be burnt every year in such a violent and gratuitous way. The aim is to place the viewer in front of a burnt-out area in which, through the lighting, the material qualities of the earth, its roughness, its smell of burning are highlighted.


Poderia ser consists of a space that is closed off on all sides except for a single passage that allows entry to the facility. It is characterized by being an L-shaped tunnel, 2.60 m high. The plywood walls are supported by a wooden structure with sandbags as a counterweight. It has no lighting except for a Led lamp (yellow), suspended so as not to be seen by the viewer, in an all-white box measuring 50 x 40 cm, fixed to the wall at the end of the corridor. This wall has a small square window, 15 x 15 cm. It is this small opening, artificially illuminated, that serves to guide the viewer who, once inside the installation, finds himself immersed in darkness. The plywood walls of the tunnel are completely black and smooth, like Rui Chafes' sculptures. The intention is for the viewer to move fearfully through the installation, to walk through it and find in the light some hope of finding an artifact displayed there, something that will give them some encouragement. Inside the illuminated white box are two pieces of prints that have been “badly cleaned”, which I have called “failed prints”. One of the prints says “life” and the other almost imperceptibly says “could be”. The viewer, dazzled by the light, after seeing inside the box, has to go the other way to get out.

Susana Anágua

Special edition of 3 paintings for Ground Zero - Atlas Residency 

Paisagem, 2022, pincel chinês, tinta da China e aguada sobre papel, 70 x 200 cm

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"Blind spots" ou o princípio da aparente erosão da memória: Diogo Costa na Galeria Sete

Diogo Costa

Title: Fissure, 2024. Technique: Acrylic, oil on sewn canvas, suspended by brass tubes. Dimensions: 125,5 x 157,3 cm. 
Photography: Daniel Malhão

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Nadya Ismail

"O princípio do amor" (2024) – "22/09/22", Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes

"O Anjo Mudo" (2021) – "22/09/22", Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, 2024. 

Ana Leal

 In "Chão de Histórias" ( Ground of Stories ), I explore the relationship between territory and family history by recognizing roots and seeds that transcend generations. The work is based on a mirroring between humans and the land, highlighting the construction of a genuine sense of identity and belonging through artistic gestures that weave together past and present, emphasizing both transformations and continuities. The project consists of three bodies of work, comprising: landscape and vegetation photographs taken by me at the backlands of Pernambuco State in northeastern Brazil, appropriated portraits from my father’s family archive, and materials such as lace and clay.

“Album de Família” (Family Album) is a polyptych featuring close-up images, presented as portraits, of typical Caatinga species—a semi-arid biome exclusive to Northeast Brazil. It is a recognition of the resilience of the Sertão, mirroring the resilience of family roots, which can also flourish when honored.

“Dobra do Tempo” (Fold of Time) presents collages composed of landscapes captured in 2022 in the regions of Floresta and Vale do Catimbau, combined with landscapes from the family archive, and Renaissance lace—a local tradition introduced to Brazil in the 19th century by French nuns and later passed on to Indigenous women. These collages establish a continuity of forms between these three “materials,” weaving a superimposition of times.

"Encontro" (Encounter) brings together portraits of my paternal grandmother’s distant ancestors and clay, representing the dry, sandy soil of the region. It is a kind of synthesis of my origins and the central premise of "Chão de Histórias” : we are one with the land that holds our roots and seeds.

"Menos Pausa" is an essay composed of images where I seek to recognize myself, physically and metaphorically, after 5 years living with menopause. In this process of natural transformation, with physical and psychological ups and downs, the notion of disappearance, both personal and social, has been striking. On the one hand, it is as if what I understood as “identity” was falling apart: I became unaware of certain aspects of my body and my behavior; on the other hand, that same body now seems invisible to the eyes of others.

Menopause unfortunately still carries many taboos resulting from a patriarchal perspective on the female body, which combined with ageism marginalizes mature women in a society that values ​​the consumerist euphoria of eternal youth, making menopause an avoided subject. With this work, I propose to break the public silence about this topic, using my voice - which also represents so many other women - to make it visible, and propose an new approach to the subject. I point out, subtly and poetically, the invisibility that society imposes on us daily, the feelings of uncertainty and loss that manifest themselves intimately, the new textures of our bodies, a sensuality that, yes, exists, and yet possible tranquility.

The essay is primarily composed of photographic images, and is accompanied by videos, watercolors, engravings and objects. The images share a subjective point of view. The watercolors, engravings and objects seek to give materiality to the organic necessarily involved in the subject. As a technological counterpoint, one of the videos presents AI's “vision” on menopause, reinforcing how distorted and exaggerated the “collective imagination” on the topic is.
