Exhibition

Drawing, Construction and Vertigo exhibition by XANA at Sagres Fortress

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The exhibition Desenho, Construção e Vertigem (Drawing, Construction and Vertigo) by the artist XANA (Alexandre Barata) opens on Saturday 21 September at 3 Pm at the Sagres Fortress Contemporary Art Centre.

Curated by Mirian Tavares and Pedro Cabral Santo, the exhibition brings together around 130 drawings created between 2011 and 2023, organised into four sections — OLEB, FELCIA and LBRD; OLEB Miracle; CENTRE; The Passage. The exhibition also features a set of five new sculptures in polychrome wood, designed especially for this space dedicated to Contemporary Art.

The opening of the exhibition will feature a vernissage supported by Quinta do Barranco Longo. The exhibition will be open until 14 December 2024, and can be visited between 9.30 and 17.30, with the last entry possible until 17.00.

About the artist: 

Xana was born in Lisbon in 1959. He graduated in Fine Arts from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts in 1984. He lives and works in Lisbon, Lagos and Faro, where he co-authored the Visual Arts Degree project at the University of Algarve, and where he has been teaching since 2005.

PhD in Communication, Culture and Arts in 2019 from the University of Algarve, with the project ‘Love, Freedom and Wisdom — Dialectics of a Visual Construction’. He is currently a member of CIAC’s research team.

Since 1981 he has held various exhibitions, set designs and interventions in public spaces. In 2005, Culturgest in Lisbon presented an anthology of his works entitled ‘Arte Opaca e Outros Fantasmas’ (Opaque Art and Other Ghosts).

His most recent work has centred on the creation of temporary public art installations and constructions. Of particular note is the 2009 construction of the ‘Arc de Triomphe’ on the Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. In 2010, he presented the ‘Assembly’ installation in the gardens of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, as part of the ‘Res Publica’ exhibition. In 2012, the installation ‘New Assembly and some prostheses’ was shown at the Chiado Museum.

In spring 2012, he built the sculptural intervention ‘A House in the Sky’ at the Almourol Contemporary Sculpture Park in Vila Nova da Barquinha. He realised the installation ‘Amor Libera Lux’ as part of the ‘Vicente’ 2013’ initiative in Belém, Lisbon. In 2016, he carried out interventions in public spaces in the Algarve as part of the ‘Watt?’ project (organised by LAC and the EDP Foundation).

In 2017, He began the ‘Labyrinth’ series at the Polytechnic Theatre in Lisbon, with the work ‘Labyrinth X001’, continued in 2019 with ‘Labyrinth X002’, at the 289 Association in Faro. Xana is represented in several museums and public collections, including the Serralves Museum in Porto, the Kunstlerhaus-Musonturm in Frankfurt, the Luso-American Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Centre in Lisbon.

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Sagres Fortress Contemporary Art Centre
Rua da Fortaleza 8650, 8650-360 Sagres

Opening hours:
Open every day from 9.30am to 5.30pm
(last entry at 17h00)