The CIAJG’s new exhibitions underline the idea of fiction of places. Such fictions of places open up breaches against the backdrop of the announced end of the “nation-state”, the crisis of representativeness, and the transformation of territories and identities. Conceived by artists and founded on the desire to redesign the world, such fictions generate new ways of inhabiting (or escaping from) the world.

Artur Barrio views the cavern as a place that exists beyond time - the artist's endless laboratory that excavates and deepens all poetry (and the flip side of existence). For Eduardo Matos, in turn, the fabriqueta (little factory) provides us with the micro-scale of prosaic existence and suggests manufacturing poetry, removed from banal elements.

On the other hand, the museum hosts the entire CIAJG collection, comprised of African, pre-Columbian and ancient Chinese art and works by José de Guimarães, as can be seen in the exhibition “Heteroclites: 1128 Objects”, on the top floor, with the exception of one of these objects, which, in its own right, symbolises “the part of the whole”. We gain a close understanding of the snake of the Baga peoples, a zoomorphic mask used in the “bansonyi” initiation rituals in the Republic of Guinea, which is featured in the museum’s cycle of exhibitions, on the basement floor.

Marta Mestre

CIAJG Artistic Direction