Annual programme 2023

In 2023, CAM will celebrate its 40th anniversary on July 20 with the launch of a Japanese Contemporary Art Season featuring visual and performative works. A special homage to Paula Rego will take place on the first anniversary of her passing, on June 8.  

CAM will also present Histórias de uma Coleção (Histories of a Collection), offering a new perspective of its collection of Modern and Contemporary Art; and Gris, vide, cris (Grey, void, cries), an encounter between the works of Rui Chafes and Alberto Giacometti. In addition, a comprehensive public programme will be developed throughout the year at the Gulbenkian Foundation and various sites around town.

Histories of a Collection. Modern and Contemporary Art at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters—Main Gallery
May 5–September 25, 2023
Curators: Ana Vasconcelos, Leonor Nazaré, Patrícia Rosas, Rita Fabiana

The history of the Gulbenkian Foundation and its dedication to the support of artists and the dissemination of art in Portugal have been key to its process of collecting Modern and Contemporary Art. Built over the course of the last 65 years, the CAM Collection is the result of encounters, convergences, ruptures and aesthetic relationships, and has grown exponentially with the acquisition of a broad and diverse range of artists, mediums and supports. The exhibition surveys the various historical threads that brought together the set of works that form the Foundation’s holding and ponders how the identity of a collection is established and how it can evolve over the course of time. It is accompanied by a catalogue featuring new essays, as well as a parallel programme that seeks to reflect on the Collection and the different models of the act of collecting.

Homage to Paula Rego
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters
June 8 June–July 24
Curator: Helena de Freitas

On the first anniversary of Paula Rego’s passing (June 8, 2022), CAM pays homage to one of Portugal’s most international artists: two of the most recent acquisitions–Angel and Turkish Bath—will be exhibited in the hall of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters. The purchase of these works makes the Foundation the private institution with the most sizeable and significant collection of the artist’s work, comprising 37 pieces, including painting, drawing and prints.

Rui Chafes and Alberto Giacometti. Gris, vide, cris
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters—Lower Gallery
May 19–September 25, 2023
Curator: Helena de Freitas

This exhibition is an encounter between two artists separated in time, in space and in the form of their sculptures. Rui Chafes was born in 1966, the year of Alberto Giacometti’s death. Although there are no biographical or historical details to connect them, the juxtaposition of their works generates an encounter that enriches the understanding of them. Indeed, both have sought to achieve a state of incorporeality and transcendence and to represent the invisible, albeit in different ways: Giacometti through a process of exasperated de-materialisation; Chafes by challenging the limits of iron and of imponderability.

Working with the curator in selecting specific works by Alberto Giacometti, Chafes then produced new works to respond to them. He also collaborated with José Neves to design a scenography that creates a sensory experience in which silence and solitude come to dominate. A first iteration of this exhibition took place in Paris in 2018 at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Paris Delegation. This exhibition will be accompanied by a publication co-published with La Fabrica.

Japanese Contemporary Art Season
Various sites at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and in Lisbon
July 2023; September 2023; November 2023
Curator: Emmanuelle de Montgazon

Based on the architectural concept of the engawa—a key element that marks Kengo Kuma’s remodelling of the CAM building—A Japanese Season brings to Lisbon works by Japanese visual and performing artists, poets, and thinkers, many of whom will present their work in Europe for the first time. It will also include many new pieces.

Chapter 1: 40th anniversary of CAM

[mé], Masayume (2021)
Various locations in the city of Lisbon
July 21–23, 2023

[mé] is an art collective with three core members: Haruka Kojin, Kenji Minamigawa, and Hirofumi Masui. First shown in Tokyo in 2021, Masayume consists of an oversize balloon installed floating over the urban landscape, shaped as the face of an individual, whose portrait was randomly selected from a database. Its towering presence reflects upon the notions of surveillance and anonymity.

Ryoji Ikeda, 100 Cymbals (2019) / John Cage/Ryoji Ikeda, But what about the noise of crumpling paper (1985/2021)
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters—Grand Auditorium
July 21, 2023

Ryoji Ikeda’s 100 Cymbals is a sound installation, performed by a team of ten percussionists. It pays tribute to John Cage and his link to Japanese culture and artists, particularly to Toru Takemitsu. The score of this piece echoes the work of the American composer, highlighting the potential of cymbals by following a path between noise and harmonic resonance.

Lei Saito, Cuisine Existentielle
Gulbenkian Garden
July 23, 2023

Workshop with Portuguese chef Leopoldo Calhau on July 20.

Lei Saito’s Cuisine Existentielle (Existential Cuisine) is an ongoing series of edible landscapes the artist has been producing since the early stages of her artistic career. Her compositions are hybridization between culinary traditions, eras, and flavours that together form a new story crystallizing a sensual experience, a new and shared atmosphere. Her audience is invited to partake in the consumption of a banquet/landscape that evolves and eventually disappears.

Chapter 2: Fluxus

Selection of works curated by Mieko Shiomi and a new work by the artist.
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters—Grand Auditorium, Auditoriums 2 and 3, Rooms 1 and 2
September 8, 9 and 10, 2023

Mieko Shiomi is a seminal artist, composer and performer who played a key role in the development of Fluxus and co-founded the experimental music collective Group Ongaku. She is known for her investigations on the nature and limits of sound, music, and auditory experiences. CAM has commissioned a new piece, which will premiere in Lisbon, alongside some historical works, never before performed in Portugal.

Ami Yamasaki & Christian Marclay, Manga Scroll / Ami Yamasaki, solo / Ami Yamasaki with Ko Ishikawa, duet
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Headquarters—Grand Auditorium, Auditoriums 2 and 3 and Gulbenkian Garden
September 8, 9 and 10, 2023

Ami Yamazaki will present Manga Scroll by Christian Marclay, one of the most renowned artists working with sound and visual art. Marclay created this performance for the ‘found in Odawara’ event held at the Odawara Foundation, in Japan, in October 2021. Yamazaki will also perform a duet with Ko Ishikawa and a solo.

Chapter 3: The CAM as an engawa for the city of Lisbon

Chim Pom from Smappa! Group, new site-specific work
Location to be announced
November 7–27, 2023 (to be confirmed)

In Lisbon, Chim Pom (CPfSG) will produce a new project based on their research into the city and their exchanges with experts in history and seismology, as well as will local immigrant communities, primarily originating from Cape Verde. This new work will reflect upon from the urban transformation resulting from gentrification, as well as a real or fantasized common history between Portugal and Japan through the memory of the earthquake of 1755.

About Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM)
CAM aims to unlock the transformational power of art to enable personal and societal change. It brings together under the same roof an extensive collection of Modern and Contemporary art and the most cutting-edge forms of contemporary cultural production in all media. Its building, designed by Sir Leslie Martin and inaugurated in 1983, is undergoing a major renovation projected by Kengo Kuma. It is scheduled to reopen to the public in the course of 2024. In the meantime, its programming is held at other sites around the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s campus—Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and the Foundation’s Headquarters and Garden—as well as throughout the city of Lisbon through its multidimensional CAM em Movimento (CAM in Motion) project.

Director: Benjamin Weil

Deputy Director: Ana Botella