A look at CAM’s collection by Leonor Antunes
In anticipation of the reopening of CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian and during the week of the 43rd edition of ARCO Madrid, the Portuguese Embassy in Spain will be exhibiting works by 14 women artists from the CAM Collection, selected by Leonor Antunes, one of Portugal’s most internationally renowned artists, who lives and works in Berlin.
This exhibition anticipates the inaugural exhibition of the new CAM, scheduled to open on the 20th of September, dedicated to the artist Leonor Antunes. In Lisbon, the exhibition will simultaneously present a project by the artist conceived for the Main Gallery as a whole and a presentation of the Collection that introduces a new way of conceiving and exhibiting CAM’s collection, inviting artists to curate the works in its collection.
The works on display as of March 7 at the official residence of the Portuguese Ambassador in Madrid, selected from among the works to be presented in Lisbon, are mostly produced after the 1960s. The exhibition will feature works by Ana Hatherly, Ana Vieira, Helena Almeida, Isabel Carvalho, Isabel Laginhas, Lourdes Castro, Lucia Nogueira, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Salette Tavares, among others.
In line with her artistic practice, focusing on forgotten and marginalised figures, Leonor Antunes pays attention to historically undervalued materials and artistic practices. As such, she presents pieces made with natural and organic materials or with recovered and obsolete objects gathered in assemblages that evoke the rural world, labour and the everyday life of the household. Some of these works, which have never been exhibited before, suggest or call for experiences and aspirations, demands and struggles, gestures of emancipation or the transformative movement of journeys, while also referring to forgotten places and constant gender inequality.
It will be a unique moment to unveil the exhibition that will inaugurate CAM’s new space, whose title “da desigualdade constante dos dias de Leonor”, quotes a drawing by the artist Ana Hatherly.
This exhibition, organised by the Portuguese Embassy in Spain, takes place as part of the 3rd edition of the “Artists join the Embassy” project, a joint initiative with the artistic “movida” during ARCO Madrid.