BEYOND BOUNDARIES. A COLLECTIVE ODYSSEY: INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW
Overview
BEYOND BOUNDARIES. A COLLECTIVE ODYSSEY, INTERNATIONAL GROUP SHOW
As part of Lisbon Art Week, the international contemporary art exhibition BEYOND BOUNDARIES – A COLLECTIVE ODYSSEY opens on May 23, across two complementary venues: the Water Museum – Barbadinhos Steam Pumping Station and the Cabo Verde Cultural Centre.
 
With artistic direction by the gallery THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE and curatorship by Graça Rodrigues, Sónia Ribeiro, and Ricardo Barbosa Vicente, the exhibition brings together works by 26 artists from various African geographies and the diaspora. It is part of the VIP programme of ARCO Lisboa, Portugal’s leading art fair, which takes place from May 29 to June 1 at the Cordoaria Nacional in Lisbon.
 
Beyond Boundaries offers a visual reflection on the philosophical concept of the third space—here understood as an interstitial territory where contemporary African art asserts itself as an act of aesthetic insurgency. The exhibition constructs a visual counter-narrative to inherited boundaries and positions art as a force capable of reconfiguring the world’s sensory horizons.
 
The exhibition presents a remarkable constellation of artists whose diverse and singular practices reflect the vitality, complexity, and strength of a continent in constant reinvention.
Structured around three key curatorial axes—materiality as discourse, figuration as resistance, and memory as a political gesture—the show invites viewers on a visual and sensorial journey that challenges the rigidity of entrenched hegemonic thought and evokes memory as an insurgent act.
 
Beyond Boundaries – A Collective Odyssey also embraces a dialogical relationship with Lisbon’s heritage linked to water supply systems, encouraging not only the discovery of artworks and artists, but also a critical reappraisal of the city’s industrial and social memory.
Works
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