EXIST/RESIST—Works by Didier Fiúza Faustino: 1995–2022

EXIST/RESIST is the first institutional exhibition surveying almost thirty years of the work of Didier Fiúza Faustino (b. 1968), the French-Portuguese experimentalist whose work has consistently provoked and transgressed the formal and conceptual demarcations between architecture, design and art.

Taking its title from two separate pieces (Exist, 2016; Resist, 2017) the exhibition reveals a propelling tension present throughout Faustino’s creative explorations and its continued resonance in face of the aggravating conditions of physical and mental survival in the world today. Whether taking the form of installation, film, sculpture, editorial project, temporary architecture or built-work, the “body” emerges as a recurring trope and measure of individuation, and as such, a site of economic and political struggle.

This exhibition curated by Pelin Tan brings together for the first time a vast selection of works, preparatory materials, and prototypes—drawings, photos, models, large-scale installations, films, and objects, revolving around four core strands of research that recur in Faustino’s work: Housing and Dwelling, Borders of Bodies, Design as Resistance, Agonism in Public Space. Featuring both past and new pieces, especially Democracia Portátil and Too late for Tomorrow, loans from international collections and never-seen-before documentation from the artist-architect’s private archive, the show is set in a scenography designed by Faustino’s studio—Mésarchitecture, and conceptually devised to put in dialogue two core areas of the museum and thus create two distinctive spatial experiences.  

The towering large-scale structure at the centre of the iconic oval gallery is made of twelve modules representing an analogical data centre, and an ex-nihilo of the artist-architect’s studio, and plays host to the core body of works in this mid-career retrospective.  Among the main pieces is Democracia Portátil, that has been reconceived for this exhibition at maat and that will host the public program.

The exhibition includes loans from: Coleção Serralves—Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Frac-Centre—Val de Loire, Michel Rein Paris/Brussels, Galeria Filomena Soares, Yves Klein Archive and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Julião Sarmento Estate.

With the participation of the Institut Français du Portugal.

October 5, maat
Book launch: Architecture for Disquiet Bodies
Talk with Lars Müller, Didier Fiúza Faustino and Pelin Tan, moderated by Beatrice Leanza.
On the occasion of this exhibition, a new book-as-manifesto is published by Lars Müller Publishers in two separate French and English editions. Edited by Christophe Le Gac, Architecture for Disquiet Bodies offers a comprehensive overview of more than 25 years of unique creations. Contributors include Marie-Hélène Fabre, Christophe Le Gac, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pelin Tan, Troy Conrad Therrien.

More about the new season at maat
September is a month for new beginnings and maat starts a new cycle of exhibitions developed under the themes of architecture, urbanism, design, and the memory of industrialisation. These are topics that define some of the areas of intervention of the museum, although they are presented according to very different discursive strategies and the programming is still open to other dimensions and creative strategies.

Apart from EXIST/RESIST by Didier Fiúza Faustino, maat presents Retroactivate, in partnership with the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Cyberart. Works from the Itaú Cultural Collection, Distant Lights by the Portuguese artist Nuno Cera, and the 14th edition of the EDP Foundation New Artists Award.

More information.