For a long time, Lisbon was best known for its tiled house facades, melancholic fado singing and stockfish. In recent years, however, the contemporary cultural scene of the Portuguese capital, which is popular with tourists, has also been experiencing an upswing. International artists have moved to the coastal city, new galleries have opened, whether from local dealers such as Bruno Murias and Francisco Fino or from foreign competitors such as Monitor from Rome and Maisterravalbuena from Madrid.
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, several attempts were made to establish an art fair in Lisbon, but it was not until 2017 that an offshoot of the Spanish ARCO was able to succeed on site. Last year, the event attracted 13,000 visitors. The ARCO Lisboa is housed on the banks of the Tagus in a former rope factory of the Portuguese Navy. Where ship's ropes used to be braided, exhibition booths are now lined up in the approximately 400-metre-long building from the 18th century.
86 galleries are participating in the sixth edition, of which only 25 are from Portugal. ARCO Lisboa has been focusing on Africa for three years, as Portugal's colonial history still has close ties to countries such as Angola and Mozambique. Eight exhibitors from the continent are represented, who are deliberately not assigned to their own "exotic section", as the curator in charge, Paula Nascimento, emphasizes.
The gallery Guns & Rain from Johannesburg will be there, with fabric paintings by Tuli Mekondjo printed with archive photos at its booth. Born in Angola in 1982 to Namibian parents, she refers to Namibia's German colonial history and the country's liberation struggles, which only gained independence in 1990 after decades under South African administration. For example, the self-taught artist, who came to Berlin in 2022 as a DAAD scholarship holder, sewed a map of historical radio stations onto one of her pictures. Tuli Mekondjo grew up in refugee camps and also expresses the longing for belonging in her works, for example in her mixed technique "A child with its mother is one heart" from 2021 (3500 euros). At the booth of the gallery African Arty from Casablanca, bright colors dominate. In her acrylic painting "I will See You When I Fall Asleep", the Moroccan artist Rahma Lhoussig immerses an introverted female figure in candy tones (4500 euros). Founded in Lisbon in 2021, Galeria .insofar also brings expertise in contemporary African art and shows photos of mask wearers captured by the Angolan Edson Chagas.
Paula Rego's works are presented by the Lisbon Galeria 111, which worked for decades with the Portuguese painter who died last year. Feminism meets black humor in two pastels: Paula Regos from 2010. They show female footballers falling on the ground; both bear the faces of the artists. One of the athletes alludes to the world star Ronaldo (95,000 each) with the number seven shirt. One of Paula Rego's enigmatic group pictures is represented by the pastel "Mary Magdalene" (230,000).
In general, the strong female presence at the fair is striking, as is the case at the stand of Cristina Guerra (Lisbon), who has been promoting the internationalization of the Portuguese art scene for more than twenty years. This year, Arabic laments will be heard from her stand, emanating from a sound sculpture by Angela Ferreira, who was born in Maputo in 1958. The political artist, to whom the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen is currently dedicating a retrospective as part of the Ruhr Festival, deals with the emancipation movement in Iran in her work. The local gallery Uma Ulik also offers a solo show with a strong contemporary focus with Plexiglas paintings and a video by Paulo Arraiano. His series of works "Postfossil" lets carnivorous plants meet industrial robots, while artificial intelligence invites jellyfish to dance.
In addition to the regular gallery program, the fair will show eleven other solo presentations in a separate area. Zeller von Almsick from Vienna presents paintings by the Taipei-born painter Hong Zeiss. His oil paintings explore patterns of rock structures, but are not limited to photorealism (17,000). Durst Britt & Mayhew from The Hague dedicate their bunk to the Mexican artist Alejandra Venegas with carved small object paintings: they are symbolically charged landscapes.
There was a crowd at the vernissage in the "Opening Lisboa" section of the fair, where the focus is on affordable art. The selection, made by curators Chus Martínez and Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, brings together 23 galleries that are young or new to ARCO Lisboa in an architecturally open structure. In the hottest and at the same time coolest zone under skylights, galleries such as General Expenses from Mexico or the Munich gallery Jahn & Jahn, which opened a branch in Lisbon in 2022, get up close and personal.