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‘Greenhouse’, the collective project by artist-curators Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges and Vânia Gala, will represent Portugal at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 20 April – 24 November 2024. The artists will create a ‘Creole garden’ in Palazzo Franchetti, referencing private plots tended by enslaved people as acts of resistance and survival – an antithesis of the monocultural plantation. Densely planted and richly biodiverse, the ‘Creole garden’ fosters a discursive space of liberation, possibility and multiplicity Created by artists from different backgrounds – visual art, history, and choreography – the project will enact a philosophy of participation, collaboration and interdisciplinary solidarity. Connecting ideas of ecology, decolonisation, diaspora and migration, the artist-curators will construct a garden of plants native to African countries, which will grow in the palace’s main hall throughout the exhibition period. The project proposes soil as a vector of decolonial and ecological engagement, capable of both sustaining growth, as well as archiving traces of historical violence, connecting past, present and future, the politics of the land, history, body and identity. The garden will stage a sound installation, sculptures, dance/performance, workshops and participatory events. Together, these components will create a transdisciplinary space of experimentation, encounter and collective possibility. ‘Greenhouse’ will be grounded in four actions: Garden (Installation, Space, Time); Living Archive (Sound, Movement, Performance), School (Education, History, Revolution); Assemblies (Public, Communities and Publication). ‘Greenhouse’ marks two anniversaries: the centenary of Amílcar Cabral (1924–73), a Bissau-Guinean anticolonial leader and agronomist crucial to the country’s independence in 1973, and the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution which deposed Portugal’s dictatorship on 25 April 1974. Emphasising the composite histories and identities that emerged from colonialism and the liberation struggles, ‘Greenhouse’ proposes actions that enact radical and decolonial solidarities, and challenge monocultural norms of nation, knowledge, and agriculture. The Pavilion unfixes hierarchical conventions, encouraging fluid modes of artistic production grounded not in binaries of theory and practice, artist and curator, but in their interconnection. The project transforms the exhibition space into a space for action and dialogue. Rather than a static experience, it proposes the creation of a ‘living archive’. The garden will be activated across the exhibition period, becoming a place of collective action and care, of multiple possibilities and pedagogy. Conceived for the first time by three women, the Portugal Pavilion proposes the emergence of various choreographies based on encounters and collaborations between public, communities and artists, in resonance with the theme of the Biennale Arte 2024, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. Moreover, ‘Greenhouse’ develops a public program of assemblies with invited guest curators and artists from Angola, Benin, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Chile, France, Nigeria, United States and Saudi Arabia fostering critical thinking through collective participation and interaction.


Greenhouse is a project grounded in interconnections of practice, theory, and pedagogy, presenting the exhibition space as a place of experimentation and reflection. The curatorial and artistic team - including a visual artist, a choreographer and a researcher - proposes collective actions through pedagogy, sound and movement that reflect on the relationship between nature, ecology and politics. The project undertakes the deconstruction of the very epistemology of the exhibition space and the hierarchical binaries of curator and artist, thought and practice, human and nature. The garden becomes a space for continuous, dialogical creation between the artists and the public.

Greenhouse proposes collective action through the creation of a “Creole garden” inside Palazzo Franchetti, which combines sculpture, stage, installation and assembly spaces, to open an area of resistance and freedom for multiple subjectivities. “Creole gardens” blend a wide range of plant species. They are instances of resistance, exercises in freedom. These multi-layered arrangements were cultivated and cared for so that different trees and aromas protected one other. 

Greenhouse asks how soil, land and borders connect with the politics of the body today. It integrates land as a way of understanding the processes of liberation and self-discovery in order to create ecologies of care in the present ecosystem. We witness these dynamics in the migrant body, the diasporic being in constant movement and transition. 

 

https://greenhouse2024.com/

 

Palácio Franchetti,
Italy

Routes to the roots, 2024
inkjet print on cotton paper, 100x66 cm
Creole Garden, 202
inkjet print on cotton paper, 120x80 cm

Ground, da série greenhouse, 2024,
Inkjet print on cotton paper
66 x 100 cm
O som do vento é a minha casa, 2024
Inkjet print on cotton paper, 80 x 120 cm
Crossing, 2024
Inkjet print on cotton paper, 66 x 100 cm
Black Island, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil
340 × 520 cm
School of revolution, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil, variable dimensions
The higher the fall, the greater the rise, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil
107 × 300 × 75 cm
Cross talk, 2024
Installation: sound, wood, iron, speakers
300 × 300 cm
Leap, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil
200 × 150 × 150 cm
Leap, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil
200 × 150 × 150 cm
Island 2, 2024
Wood, Iron, Plants, Soil
140 × 340 cm
Transplanting, 2024
Wood, soil, HD video, sound, 30'20''
Weaving stories while walking, 2024
Wood, HD Video and Sound, 232 x 200 cm
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