MAAT opens the last quarter of the year with six new exhibitions, rounding up a year dedicated to topical subjects, such as environmental instability, post-colonialism or the relationship between art, architecture and philosophy.
Entering a dialogue with the Eco-Visionaries project, Tadashi Kawamata’s solo exhibition at MAAT’s Oval Gallery will open on October 4, as a central moment of the museum’s 2nd anniversary commemorations. Evoking issues of global ecology, this large-scale commission integrates both plastic residues and abandoned boats collected on Portugal’s shores during beach cleaning campaigns by volunteer organisation Brigada do Mar. Developed along one year of research and field work in Portugal, Kawamata’s project including a workshop that involved the local community, with artists and architects led by architectural collective Os Espacialistas. The resulting installation, Over Flow, is a truly immersive environment, inviting viewers to experience a seascape of remains which follows a fictional ecological catastrophe. At the peak of a 40-year-long career, this is the first time Kamawata works with plastic debris as the chosen material for a site-specific installation. While the artist does not consider himself an environmentalist, he is interested in the sculptural qualities of the indiscriminate remains, together with notions of accumulation and scale.
Simultaneously, the iconic Boiler Hall at the Power Station once again welcomes Artists’ Film International, a collective exhibition that results from an international partnership initiated by London’s Whitechapel Gallery. With truth as this year’s theme, this year’s iteration includes artists such Vladimir Kikolic, John Skoog, Juan Sorrentino, Danielle Dean, Musa paradisiaca, Rosa Barba, Tom Ireland and Patrick Hough. Lastly, Elefante, by Portuguese photographer André Príncipe, explores the subject of death and the way in which Western society tends to refuse to confront it. The exhibition’s title comes from the phrase “elephant in the room,” something which we don’t want to name, which bothers, unsettles and scares us, something we don’t know how to deal with but which is always there.
Openings in November with Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe, João Louro, and Haus Wittgenstein
In November, American duo Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe will start MAAT’s Video Room independent programme on expanded video practices. Scenario in the Shade is an immersive environmental installation articulated with the projection of three short films, playing with concepts of hypertrophic urbanism, community, ritual and psychopharmacology. Originally presented at the Istanbul Biennale 2017, curated by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, this will be the installation’s second presentation in Europe, after it was shown at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, in Copenhagen.
The theme of Haus Wittgenstein: Art, Architecture & Philosophy is the 90th anniversary celebration of the house of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), in Vienna. The project, begun in 1926 and completed in 1928, is a house with a rich history where several fields of knowledge overlap. This occurs because Wittgenstein himself was the architect, but also because the project’s history, its building and occupation evoke a series of conflicts which can serve as a basis of understanding for the creative process, both in art and architecture. The exhibition curated by Nuno Crespo includes existing works and new commissions by artists such as Ângela Ferreira, Derek Jarman, João Louro, Bruce Nauman, Pedro Cabrita Reis, John Baldessari, João Maria Gusmão + Pedro Paiva, Julião Sarmento, among others.
João Louro presents Linguistic Ground Zero at MAAT’s Project Room, reflecting on the pivotal historical moments when art and society appear to come together in the need to end history as we know it, namely during the two World Wars and the corresponding artistic avant-garde movements. In an exhibition curated by David G. Torres, the Portuguese artist brings back to life “Little Boy,” the first atom bomb released over the population of Hiroshima, in Japan, on August 6, 1945, where around 140 thousand people lost their lives. Louro compiled hundreds of images of bombs from several different wars, where one can read various messages, from dedications, to insults aimed at the enemy, to references of icons from pop culture. Combining sculpture, graffiti, poetic inscriptions and writing fragments, the artist carries out an exercise in complex thought, which allow us to evoke the tense relationship between imminent destruction and culture and its icons.
MAAT’s 2nd Anniversary Celebration
Open Weekend, October 5, 6 and 7
On Friday, October 5, MAAT will celebrate the second anniversary of the new building designed by Amanda Levete with a special free-access weekend. The Open Weekend anniversary programme includes a wide range of events, including an artist-led tour of Over Flow, by Tadashi Kawamata, special family activities, and a one day film festival, Arquiteturas em Curtas, featuring a series of short films on trends and tendencies in contemporary architecture. For more info and full programme, please go to: www.maat.pt.