Greenhouse Collective to Represent Portugal in Venice

Mónica De Miranda b. 1976, Portugal Follow +

Three artist-curators will represent Portugal at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

GREENHOUSE is a collective project by visual artist Mónica de Miranda, activist Sónia Vaz Borges, and choreographer Vânia Gala.

They will create a ‘Creole garden’ that serves as a sculpture, school, stage, and installation. It will reflect on the relationships between nature, ecology, and politics, and encounters between the public, communities, and artists.

Speaking to Ocula in 2020, de Miranda said her sense of self was built from both her Portuguese nationality and her Angolan ancestry.

‘My work recreates histories and places of belonging through a narrative of displacement and affections,’ she said. ‘This is the shift where my work became an emotional field, “an imagined geography” where I can express what I am, where I come from, and what I can become.’

Her practice aligns nicely with the biennale’s theme Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, which seeks to platform artists who are in different ways foreigners and outsiders.

Commissioned by Portugal’s Directorate-General for the Arts, the Portugal Pavilion will be exhibited at Palazzo Franchetti on the banks of the Grand Canal from 20 April to 24 November, 2024. —[O]

Main image: Mónica De Miranda, Double Force (2022). Inkjet print on cotton paper, 70 x 105 cm. Courtesy the artist and Sabrina Amrani, Madrid.