Loulé Session

Can art help make the world a better place? Is art capable of imagining and proposing alternatives? Can art remain essential when struggling to survive? After the first months of the pandemic, how do we describe the new personal relationships? What is the new relationship established between humans and objects?

Neringa Bumblienė is Curator at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, since 2014. She has respectively graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts with a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies, and from the curatorial school École du Magasin in Grenoble, France. Throughout her career, she has worked on numerous contemporary art projects from large-scale international group exhibitions, such as Head with Many Thoughts (2020) and Baltic Triennial 13. Give Up the Ghost (2017-2018) to solo presentations of established and emerging artists. Her recent curatorial projects include the following solo exhibitions: The Board by Robertas Narkus at the gallery Vartai in Vilnius (2020); Return by Michael Rakowitz (2020), Tactics & Techniques by Alejandro Cesarco (2019), Phantom by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (2018), and The Light is no Brighter at the Centre by Liam Gillick (2017), the latter four at the CAC in Vilnius. She is the Curator of the Pavilion of Lithuania at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with the project Gut Feeling by Robertas Narkus (2022) and the Artistic Director of the 1st Vilnius Biennial for Performance Art to be held in 2023.

Pedro Barateiro (Almada, 1979) works in a variety of media, including sculpture, film, performance, writing and drawing. His work has focused on the deconstruction of western binary narratives. Barateiro organizes events and exhibitions at Spirit Shop, a space managed by him and attached to his studio in Rua da Madalena in Lisbon. In 2020, together with a group of artists, he started the AAVP - Association of Visual Artists in Portugal. He held solo exhibitions at CRAC Alsace (2022), Kohta (2022), Rialto6 (2021), REDCAT (2016), Museu Coleção Berardo (2015), Kunsthalle Basel (2010), Kunsthalle Lissabon (2010), Lumiar Cité (2010), Museu de Serralves (2009), among many others. He has participated in group exhibitions such as the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), 20th SESC - Videobrasil (2017), 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), 16th Sydney Biennial (2008) and 5th Berlin Biennial (2008). Barateiro edited the books Temporary Collaborations and ACTIVITY (JRP|Ringier) with artist Ricardo Valentim. He edited the monographs How to Make a Mask, (Kunsthalle Lissabon/ Sternberg Press), The Artist as Spectator and É só uma ferida (Documenta/ Mousse Publishing).