The Portugal Pavilion at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia presents ‘Greenhouse,’ a collective project by artist-curators Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges, and Vânia Gala.
Mónica de Miranda, a Portuguese visual artist, filmmaker, and researcher, explores politics, gender, memory, space, and history through various mediums. She founded Hangar in 2014, an art and research center in Lisbon, offering collaborative spaces for artists, curators, and researchers from the global south. Her work combines documentary and fiction, examining resistance strategies, storytelling, and care ecologies.
Sónia Vaz Borges is a renowned interdisciplinary historian with a background in social and political activism. Born in Portugal to Cape Verdean immigrants, she has a passion for history and has studied topics like liberation struggles, social movements, international solidarity, and the intersection of education, memory, space, and architecture. Borges has taught at three international public universities: Lisbon, Berlin, and New York.
Vânia Gala is a renowned choreographer and researcher known for her innovative approach to choreography and performance, challenging traditional perspectives in contemporary art. Her work explores non-performances, opacity, refusal, choreo-thinking, fugitivity, negotiation, and dissensus. Her experimental practices emphasize hospitality and the intrinsic value of artistic expression.
The exhibit features a “Creole garden” within Palazzo Franchetti, inspired by gardens cultivated by enslaved individuals as a form of resistance and survival. The garden, a symbol of diversity and freedom, serves as a space for discourse, possibility, and pluralism. Composed of African plants, it intertwines themes of ecology, decolonization, diaspora, and migration.
The project includes a sound installation, sculptures, dance performances, workshops, and interactive events, creating a multidisciplinary platform for exploration and community engagement. It also commemorates the centenary of Amílcar Cabral and the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, which overthrew Portugal’s dictatorship in 1974. The Pavilion disrupts traditional hierarchies in art production, fostering fluidity between the roles of artists and curators, theory and practice.
The theme “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere” resonates through the Pavilion’s emphasis on new choreographies of interaction and collaboration, marking a pioneering venture by three African-Portuguese women and setting a stage for diverse community and artistic partnerships.
Source: E-flux, Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges, Wellcome Collection
