2025
Lucid Reverie
Curated by Hiuwai Chu & Raphael Fonseca. At Galeria Municipal do Porto.
Lucid Reverie is a visible fragment of a much larger undertaking — an exhibition born from an invitation by João Laia to engage with the Portuguese art scene and develop a presentation of artists with strong, consistent practices that remain under-recognized interna- tionally. What you see in this exhibition is just a sliver of the broader process: a constellation of works that cut across generations, dis- ciplines, and media. Yet, we call it a fragment because the heart of the project lies in what remains unseen, the countless studio visits and conversations with artists that will continue to resonate long after the exhibition takes form.
Our journey began in Porto at the end of April 2024. Since then, we’ve returned to Portugal multiple times, immersing ourselves in its art scene through exhibitions in museums, galleries, festivals, and independent spaces. We engaged in conversations with curatorial peers, Lucid Reverie but most importantly, we spent time with, we think, around a hundred artists — meeting in person and online, together and individually. We asked for portfolios and links for videos, talked about their works, the visual arts in general, and, of course, about life. This way, with lots of to-and-fro, we built a very peculiar and asymmetrical first-hand understanding of the contemporary artistic land- scape of a nation that, just like any other, is an invention.
From the beginning, we knew that we didn’t want to approach the project by imposing an overarching theme and only seeking out art- ists who referenced certain ideas; 23 instead, we tried to approach our conversations and studio visits with an openness that would allow us to establish natural links between are- as of research and artistic sensibili- ties. Simply put, we wanted to work from the ground up and understand what is brewing on the western part of the Iberian Peninsula. We met with artists born, raised, and that continue to work in Portugal, artists from elsewhere who have made Portugal their home, and Portuguese artists living abroad who retain strong connections to their homeland. Unsurprisingly, the range of practices we encountered was as diverse as in any other context — varied in approach and medium and varied regarding their underlying existential interests. Besides this diversity of approaches to how someone can still make images in the present, it was also essential to talk with art- ists from very different generations — from artists in their 20s, recently leaving university to analyzing estates of artists recently diseased, our process of research was, to say the least, porous. Any direction could, initially, be a direction.
Who shapes the Portuguese art scene? What drives these artists — what are their questions, con- cerns, materials, and modes of production? What does it mean to work in Portugal today? What are the advantages and constraints of this context? What pleasures and trau- mas do artists bring in their identity and/or territorial attachment to the country? How many Portugals are there inside Portugal? Do the art- ists living on the islands of Azores and Madeira have the same opportunities as those living in continental Portugal? Is it manageable to have a consistent career without moving to big cities like Lisbon and Porto?
We often ended our studio visits by asking the artists their opin- ions on the Portuguese art scene. Like a talk show interview, each art- ist gave us a different answer. Many artists discussed how “small” Portugal is, not only regarding its scale compared to other countries in the world, especially in Europe, but also small as an economy that, whether being powerful or not, never showed an interest to help foster its visual artists. Leaving Portugal and looking for an “international career,” for them, is not always a possibility, but often seen as something necessary; without it and international experience, it seemed impossible to make it happen as an artist in the country. Some artists had the privilege of studying abroad; others had the social ability to build an international network after specific invitations to be part of different projects. This fiction around the idea of being “international” is extensive — this could mean the United Kingdom, other European countries, the Unit- ed States, or even other places in the Global South, like Latin America.
Another group of artists we talked to, even though they recognized the limits of having a professional career in the country, didn’t seem so anxious to have these international roots, being born, raised, and practicing in the country from a very young age seemed to give them a sense of experimentation and freedom that big artsy cities lack of. Staying in the country is not a matter of nationalist pride but can be seen as an act of resistance and a compliment to a specific idea of freedom. Whether this immense recognition will come one day is a matter of time and luck; the vital thing to some of them was having the time, space, and silence to keep working every day.
As the reader can imagine, the difference in answers and ex- pectations around how the art scene in Portugal is seen by its artists is interesting and would certainly deserve a specific study and research in the future — especially when you look at the history of the region and see artists complaining about the lack of public investment, international recognition, and even working rights since the 16th century. An art scene is made not only of its artists and the images and discourses they produce but also of how these agents look and invent a particular opinion around their system — to learn about it was very anthropological and essential for our curatorial choices during this process.
Another critical and final layer of this project is our collaboration as curators. It began as a curatorial blind date, bringing together two individuals from different generations, cultural contexts, and profes- sional trajectories, each with varying degrees of familiarity with the Portuguese scene. What united us was a shared curiosity and the perspective of outsiders looking in. This led to many conversations, debates, and discoveries — stretching across time zones and media — from a constant flux of WhatsApp messages to video meetings, at times the 24 Panorama of Portuguese Contemporary Art Lucid Reverie 25 pleasure of meeting in person and deepening our inquiries together.
After many discussions and learning much about each other, we invited twenty artists who dialogue in overlapping ways, addressing no- tions of the body in its relation to history, memory, and our surroundings. Curiously, our gaze always matched our mutual interests towards art- ists’ practices that are not circumscribed, which open perspectives, and provoke questions and doubts, and that play in different ways with a certain sense of metamorphosis and fiction. This exhibition brings together artists that don’t necessarily avoid the idea of the document and the appeal of the “real” in a more sociological way but it undoubtedly embraces creators who seem to be constantly inventing new worlds full of mystery and ambivalence.
In hindsight — perhaps unconsciously, since this project started with an external invitation that deals with one specific geog- raphy, Portugal — could this selection of artists with practices that almost never make it clear their national belonging be a certain response to the fallacy of any curatorial project that has a national approach? Perhaps, but as our title states, when writing its text this per- ception comes as a lucid reverie.
Our process was certainly more about reverie than about lucidity — very non-linear, as perhaps every curatorial research process should be. We hope this feeling of doubt or ambiguity will also be felt by the exhibition’s visitors and by the readers of the publication.
Hiuwai Chu & Raphael Fonseca