About Us

About & Mission

About PortugalArte

PortugalArte is a month long exhibition taking place in Lisbon, Grândola, Portimao and Vila Real de Santo António that will showcase leading contemporary artists with a focus on identifying trends, movements and communities populating the global art scene.

This biannual public art event will feature commissioned public sculpture projects, curated group exhibitions, and site-specific installations addressing themes related to contemporary life. It will be spread across Lisbon and its surrounding regions, including city squares, walkways, beach territories, and historic interior spaces.

Artists will be selected for the exhibition through an open and decentralized curatorial model engaging multiple experts—curators, writers, artists, designers, arts patrons – and works will be exhibited in a manner that similarly evoke communal discourse and participation. The art will engage or confront its immediate urban context by using ideas of subject, form, scale, monumentality, or experiential space. It will bring about new social and geographical understandings of the city that challenge its conventions and familiarity.

The list of participants for the inaugural event includes some of the most important contemporary artists working today, as well as emerging talent representative of the changing global scene. Chris Burden, Jonathan Monk, Joe Bradley, Robert Melee, Cory Arcangel, Jim Shaw, Gabriel Abrantes, Eduardo Batarda, Urbano, Rigo 23 e Didier Fiuza Faustino, Nathan Mabry, Walead Beshty, Ana Jotta, Justin Lieberman, Sterling Ruby, Olaf Breuning, Marnie Weber, Shinique Smith, AIDS-3D, Jim Drain and Carlos Bunga are among the more than fifty artists presenting work at PortugalArte.


Mission of PortugalArte

  • To encourage the exhibition of international contemporary art, with a strong focus on monumental public sculpture, in an environment that establishes a relationship between the great historical city of Lisbon and its environs and the forward looking cultural vision of contemporary art today.
  • To engage Portuguese citizens and drive visitors to the region in a festival that celebrates the social value of public spaces and art providing interactive cultural programming.
  • To promote Lisbon, Grândola and Portugal as a dynamic cultural destination highlighting the unique outdoor lifestyle of the region.
  • To bring about international cultural exchange in a way that privileges inclusivity and public engagement over exclusivity and stasis.
  • To encourage a multiplicity of people and ideas around works of contemporary art by placing them in active and accessible public spaces.
  • To offer artists the opportunity to make new work in Lisbon and to reach a broader audience.