ARCOlisboa 2020 Online | About

ARCOlisboa has established itself as the great artistic place of the Portuguese capital. The participation of galleries, collectors, curators and other professionals acknowledges Lisbon as one of the most attractive European cultural centres.

ARCOlisboa -Portugal’s young and dynamic contemporary art fair- has decided to reschedule its physical version to 2021 while converting this year’s edition into a four-week long online version that will continue to offer online fair-goers exclusive access to the vibrant Portuguese contemporary art scene.

The selection of galleries will count with the General Programme and two curated sections; Opening Lisboa, curated for the first time by the curatorial team Kunsthalle Lissabon , offers a selection of newcomer galleries to the fair and Africa in Focus by Paula Nascimento, develops for the second consecutive year, with a number of new galleries in addition to those that successfully participated in the fair in 2019.

Do not miss the works that guest curators and collectors will select weekly through the Curators and Collectors Pick programmes beginning May 26th.

João Mourão (Alegrete, 1975) and Luis Silva (Lisboa, 1978) are a curatorial duo based in Lisbon, Portugal, where they currently serve as co-directors of Kunsthalle Lissabon, a contemporary art institution they founded in 2009. A selection of recent shows they curated includes solos by Caroline Mesquita, Engel Leonardo, Sol Calero, Irene Kopelman and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, as well as group shows in institutions such as Extra City, Antwerp, David Roberts Art Foundation, London and MACE, Elvas. Besides their curatorial practice, João Mourão and Luís Silva are also contributing editors of CURA. magazine and co-editors of the ongoing book series Performing the Institution(al), addressing recent developments in institutional practice. They were the curators of ZONA MACO SUR (2015 - 2017), the solo projects section of Mexico City's contemporary art fair, and Artissima's section Disegni (2017 - 2019), dedicated to recent developments in drawing.

Paula Nascimento (1981) is an architect and independent curator based in Luanda. She is co-founder of Beyond Entropy Africa (2010 - 2016), a research studio that has worked in the fields of architecture, visual arts and geopolitics and has developed a series of curatorial projects in art and architecture and design and related topics, including Luanda Encyclopedic City, the award-winning Angola Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013. As an independent curator, she has worked on interdisciplinary projects exploring themes linked to postcolonial cities, identit(ies) and contemporary readings for historical themes. She is curator of several exhibitions in Angola, South Africa, Portugal, Italy, Bamako Biennial, VI Lubumbashi Biennial, and curator of Focus Africa at Arco Lisboa 2019 and 2020. Paula is also a founding member of the Colectivo Pés Descalços, a Luanda-based platform for educational projects in the cultural field and has also contributed to several publications.