A Paradigm Shift
March 22–August 21, 2017
Order and Progress
March 22–April 24, 2017
Following its official opening on October 5, 2016, the new MAAT kunsthalle reopens to the public on March 22, 2017, with two major exhibitions that take up the whole building: Utopia/Dystopia—A Paradigm Shift, curated by Pedro Gadanho, João Laia and Susana Ventura—and Order and Progress by Mexican artist Héctor Zamora, curated by Inês Grosso.
Utopia/Dystopia—A Paradigm Shift is the first “manifesto exhibition” to be held in the kunsthalle designed by Amanda Levete (AL_A). Installed in three of MAAT’s galleries, this key-inaugural project will be a large group show featuring more than 60 works by a range of international artists and architects, some appearing for the first time in Portugal. The show will reveal how the two fields have represented ideas of utopia, or anticipated emerging notions of dystopia, since the early 1970s, with a strong focus on work produced over the last five years. Participants include architects such as Archigram, Archizoom, åyr, Didier Faustino, Yona Friedman, Aldo Rossi, Superstudio, and artists such as Kader Attia, Jordi Colomer, Tacita Dean, DIS Collective, Cao Fei, Ângela Ferreira, Cyprien Gailard, Jonas Staal, Ryan Trecartin, and Wolfgang Tillmans.
The preview opening will be held on March 21 with special performances by Michelangelo Pistolleto and Allard van Hoorn which will take place outside the new building.
Héctor Zamora presents a new version of the performance/installation Order and Progress, in which the remains of traditional Portuguese fishing boats from different coastal regions temporarily occupy MAAT’s Oval Gallery. The performance, previously presented at the Palais de Tokyo in 2016, will take place in the Oval Gallery on March 22, at 6pm, coinciding with the museum’s opening to the public.
The opening programme continues in the galleries at the Central Power Station with a new exhibition from the EDP Foundation Art Collection. What I Am is the third in a series of thematic surveys from this collection of Portuguese Contemporary Art. Curated by Inês Grosso and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, the show examines the autobiographical and self-referential dimension of artistic creation. With Helena Almeida, José Barrios, Sara Bichão, Mauro Cerqueira, Miguel Faro, Jorge Molder, Julião Sarmento, António Sena, João Queiroz and João Pedro Vale, amongst others.
Other exhibitions on view at MAAT include Liquid Skin, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Joaquim Sapinho, curated by Alexandre Melo (Boiler Hall), the group show Variable Dimensions - Artists and Architecture, curated by Gregory Lang and Inês Grosso (Central 1), and Archive and Democracy by Portuguese artist José Maçãs de Carvalho, curated by Ana Rito (Ashpit 8).
Exhibitions opening in May with ARCOLisboa 2017
Coinciding with the second edition of ARCOLisboa, on May 17 the museum will open three new exhibitions: a large-scale project by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, which will occupy nearly 1000 sq. m of the kunsthalle’s Oval Gallery; and two exhibitions in the galleries of Central Power Station, both by Portuguese artists: a site-specific work by João Onofre at the monumental Boiler Hall, and APQHome, an art installation by Ana Pérez-Quiroga.
ARCOLisboa takes place between May 18 and 21 at Cordoaria Nacional, just a few meters from MAAT’s new building.
Open call: APQ Home—Ana Pérez Quiroga
We are looking for: Artists, curators, critics, art historians, architects, filmmakers, performers, theater practitioners, choreographers, writers, musicians, textile designers, food artists, interdisciplinary collectives, & other related areas.
APQHome is a project consisting in a domestic space—a house and its objects—and a garden, inside the MAAT exhibition space. It is a total work of art that requires the participant’s intervention in an immersion that, in a 48-hour period, aim to perform the everyday life, in a total art/life fusion experience. The participants will have the opportunity to spend two nights at the museum, occupying this domestic space in a program taking place between May 16 and July 30, 2017.
Open call: Starting on March 8, registration for APQHome is open until June 8, 2017.
More info here.
The kunsthalle
AL_A’s kunsthalle, which contains four distinct gallery spaces, captures the essence of the exceptional 38,000 m2 riverside site and its extraordinary light. Blending structure into landscape, and conceived to create significant new public spaces, it is designed to allow visitors to walk over and under, as well as through the building, while the undulating roof offers panoramic views towards the river and across Belém. The building creates a constantly changing place filled with aquatic reflections that interplay with the overhanging façade covered in 15,000 three-dimensional tiles, a reference to Portugal’s rich tradition of ceramics.
The completion of the architectural project will also include a park designed by Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture, as well as an elegant pedestrian bridge, also designed by AL_A (both set for May 2017), that will land on the new kunsthalle roof, making the campus and waterfront more accessible to the city.
