THIAGO BARBALHO, LIDIA LISBÔA

Set against a broader context of increasing automation and digital saturation, the exhibition foregrounds artisanal techniques as considered and relevant forms of production. Slowness is presented not as nostalgia, but as a deliberate mode of creation, one that privileges continuity and depth of artistic inquiry. The title Hand in Hand reflects both the material focus of the works on view and the collaborative relationship between the two artists. The exchange between Barbalho and Lisbôa first took shape when Barbalho recognised shared affinities across working techniques, artistic concerns, and personal trajectories shaped by experiences of migration and the constraints of the class system, where access to creativity is often unevenly distributed.

Lidia Lisbôa’s work spans ceramics, textiles, sculpture, crochet, drawing, and performance. Anchored in her daily rhythm in the studio, Lisbôa’s approach centres on attentive focus, where artistic activity becomes a form of research. For Hand in Hand, Lisbôa presents a new body of work comprising ceramics, textiles, and works on paper, developed largely during her residency at Elizabeth Xi Bauer’s Deptford studio in the months leading up to the exhibition. Rooted in craft traditions and personal histories, the works treat tactile elements as carriers of memory and touch, with many textiles repurposed. Lisbôa explores themes of the body and lived experience, allowing meaning to emerge gradually.

Working in coloured pencils, graphite, spray, oil, oil pastel, and marker on paper, Thiago Barbalho’s compositions propose intricate universes of form, where references and colours intertwine to create psychedelic narratives that challenge the relationship between figure and background. The artist’s visual research seeks to understand drawing as the sign of a presence; the relationship between the mind and the body; and between consciousness and reality.

For Hand in Hand, Barbalho has created new large-scale drawings alongside a sculptural series depicting hands holding one another. Built through patience and repetition, the works construct imagined, tactile worlds rendered in a luminous palette. Presented at an expanded scale, the drawings evoke the presence of monumental hands, suggesting a spiritual force of creation. Barbalho’s new sculptural works give literal form to the exhibition’s central metaphor, extending the artist’s longstanding interest in interdependence and the emotional charge of gestures.

Barbalho’s meticulously rendered dune drawings in graphite and coloured pencil echo the forms of Lisbôa’s knotted fabric works from her Teta series and her ceramic termite mounds from the Cupinzeiros series (1996–2024). Each belongs to an ongoing body of work shaped through actions: knotting, carving, and drawing, through which familiar structures are continually reworked.

Though distinct in medium and presentation, Lisbôa and Barbalho are woven together by a shared commitment to time-based work and physical engagement. Rather than responding directly to one another, their practices unfold through parallel methods and conceptual frameworks, allowing connections to surface gradually. Hand in Hand positions artistic activity as a shared act, foregrounding mutual influence and enduring labour, and asserting attention and focus as rare and vital resources in contemporary society.

This exhibition is curated by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes.