“Exílios” (Exiles) is the name of the new exhibition by artist Lisa Santos Silva, which will be on display at the Ala da Frente municipal gallery. The opening will take place on 25 October at 18h00, with free admission and the artist in attendance.
‘Lisa Santos Silva has developed a uniquely intimate body of work that extols the wisdom of returning to one's origins,’ says the curator of the municipal gallery, António Gonçalves, adding that in this work, the painter ‘leaves, through her glazes, an infinite depth and, through the material of the painting, a powerful presence.’
Regarding the exhibition, which will be on display at Ala da Frente until 31 January 2026, the curator comments that ‘in her painting there is a presence of gazes that demand our attention and cause unease; they are beings that carry immense emotional weight and, in a state of suspension, inhabit something that finds neither meaning nor resolution’ and that "in her photographs - created from the recovery of 19th-century photographs - Lisa revisits and composes these images with the use of red spots. These reinvent sensations, reinforce impressions, highlight details and evoke times and emotions."
Lisa Santos Silva was born in Porto and is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, writing, photography, video and collage. At the age of 6, she left for Angola, where she spent her childhood and adolescence. Between 1965 and 1967, she attended the National School of Fine Arts in Porto and, in 1975, together with Eduardo Prado Coelho and Hélder Macedo; she participated in the creation of the Secretariat of State for Culture, where she headed the Department of Fine Arts until 1977. The following year, he moved to Paris and began an international career, exhibiting in Paris, Lund, Brussels, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Ghent, Porto (Serralves Museum) and Lisbon (National Museum of Contemporary Art, Gulbenkian Museum, Costume Museum and Galeria 111). In 1980, she joined the Department of Education at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, where she worked for six years as a lecturer and specialist in the 20th century.
Lisa Santos Silva's work can be found in several public collections, including: the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Museum, the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the Manuel de Brito Collection.
The Ala da Frente Gallery is located in the Barão da Trovisqueira Palace, which houses the Bernardino Machado Museum, on Rua Adriano Pinto Basto in Vila Nova de Famalicão.
It can be visited from Tuesday to Friday, from 10h00 to 17h30, and on weekends from 14h30 to 17h30. It is closed on Mondays, national holidays, and 24th and 31st December. Admission is free.
