About

The future is shaped in the present. Bienal’25 Fotografia do Porto adopts the theme TOMORROW TODAY / AMANHÃ HOJE to advance a programme of critical reflection and situated action rooted in the now. TOMORROW TODAY imagines a more regenerative and interdependent world, calling for artistic and collaborative practices that engage with the urgencies of the present while rehearsing possible futures. The Bienal positions itself as a platform for study and experimentation, fostering encounters between artists, curators, and cultural, social, and governmental organisations at the intersection of artistic research, curatorial practice, and public engagement.

The programme is structured around four interconnected platforms — CONECTAR (to bridge, to exchange), SUSTENTAR (to sustain, to preserve), VIVIFICAR (to live, to stay), and EXPANDIR (to expand, to grow) — which serve as zones of enquiry for exhibitions, residencies, collaborative research, and territorial mediation. Through these platforms, the Bienal hosts practices that traverse rural and urban territories, local communities and international networks, advancing plural ways of engaging with image-making, ecology, technology, memory, and affect. Between gestures of listening, speculative approaches, and situated pedagogies, Bienal’25 Fotografia do Porto cultivates a present that is attentive, critical, and oriented towards what is yet to come.

CONECTAR initiates international dialogue and fosters partnerships that bring together diverse artistic ecosystems. Lightseekers explores photography’s entanglement with spiritual and political revelation through the lenses of five contemporary artists — Claudia Andujar, Pariacaca, Hoda Afshar, Christo Geoghegan and SMITH — each engaging with erased histories, acts of resistance to colonial legacies, and visionary or ritual practices. In Depth of Field, Mónica de Miranda examines emergent landscapes as a means to reimagine historical narratives and propose alternative futures. Kathrin Stumreich’s Mid-air Collisions interrogates the ecological implications of concentrated solar power infrastructures, while Luca Locatelli’s Future Studies questions dominant paradigms of growth and humanity’s evolving relationship with technology and the natural world. Sara Orsi’s Open Structures exposes how digital architectures can reproduce exclusion, particularly for marginalized communities. Artist Sofia Borges residency sited in the collections of the Museum of Natural History and Science and the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. Her exhibition and performance, Peles de Imagens, Espelhos Luminosos., a critical and poetic reflection on time, memory and representation.

SUSTENTAR investigates ecological and social sustainability across four distinct territories in Portugal. Carlos Trancoso’s Urbanarium responds to Porto BioLab, a forest-based laboratory designed to optimise ecosystem services to support the urban community. In Rhizomes, Joana Dionísio explores grassroots activism within the Algarvensis Geopark, positioning local engagement as a means to bridge environmental and social sustainability. Catarina Braga’s Practices of a Living Archive, developed at Casa de Mateus in dialogue with the School of Transitions project, translates scientific research into digital visual forms, revealing the complex entanglements between biodiversity and technology. Gonçalo C. Silva's A Lake Above the Desert contemplates the uneasy coexistence of natural and artificial dimensions in Europe's largest human- made lake, where submerged histories meet the advancing reality of climate-induced aridity.

The ViViFiCAR project connects artists-in-residence with rural communities in the Douro region through participatory creation, engaging with themes such as human-nature relations, land sustainability, migration and identity. The Season of Cherries resulted from Lara Jacinto's residency in Sabrosa that foregrounds recently arrived migrant communities from Europe and Asia, set against a landscape historically shaped by emigration. In Torre de Moncorvo, Augusto Brázio’s Incision explores the question of the human sense of belonging within the surrounding ecosystem. James Newitt’s video installation Raw Material, developed in Mêda, reflects on mining and agricultural practices as metaphors through which to navigate temporal layers of the past, present and imagined futures.

EXPANDIR supports the development of projects and exhibition productions by emerging artists whose work interweaves social and environmental structures, probing the intersections of technology, ecology, and human resilience. In The Extraterritoriality of Toxicity, students from the Royal College of Art, London investigate the impact of artificial toxicity on both human and non-human bodies, using the Douro River as a fluid archive of post-natural relations. Ties that Bind — a travelling exhibition presented in collaboration with FUTURES, the European Union’s photography platform — explores contemporary forms of belonging, kinship, and connection. Dev Dhunsi, Ihar Hancharuk, Jan Durina, Donja Nasseri, Sheung Yiu, Angyvir Padilla and Sasha Chaika navigate these shifting dynamics, revisiting affective, territorial, and technological bonds in an effort to reconcile with our fractured realities. Odair Rocha Monteiro’s I Don’t See Colour interrogates the myth of racial neutrality, drawing on visual and cinematic codes to raise new questions about perception and positionality. Students from the University of South Wales Master of Art in Documentary Photography program contribute with In Your Head: Works-Concepts-Processes, an exhibition that embraces a playful and open- ended approach to photography — at times introspective and intimate, while at others monumental and outward-facing. In co-creation with young people from Porto’s Pasteleira neighbourhood, Paula Preto developed the With the Beautiful Images of What Has Disappeared, forming part of the Bienal'25 Fotografia do Porto’s public mediation programme.

Team

Director General
Virgílio Ferreira
Co-Artistic Directors
Jayne Dyer, Virgílio Ferreira
Curators
Discotec, Francisco Lobo, Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro, Jayne Dyer, João Laia, João Leal, Mark Durden, Nuno Crespo, Paulo Moreira, Romea Muryń, Rui Mascarenhas, Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo, Susana Lourenço Marques, Thyago Nogueira, Virgílio Ferreira
Artists
Alan Bulley, Angyvir Padilla, Augusto Brázio, Bogdan Smith, Carlos Trancoso, Catarina Braga, Colectivo ADS11 (Angel Chase, Ezdan Bakir, Jonathan Woo, Min Ha Jun, Ziyu Zhang, Charlotte Amos, Eduardo De Miguel Muñoz, Ellena Grace Pointer, Nanchalee Rebecca Waite, Nesrin Kianni, Yuhui Qiang, Yunan Wang, Jing Zhenzhen), Christo Geoghegan, Christoph Zerr, Claudia Andujar, Dev Dhunsi, Edward Jones, Emirhan Demirel, Gonçalo C. Silva, Helena Lea Manhartsberger, Hoda Afshar, Ihar Hancharuk, James Newitt, Jan Durina, Joana Dionísio, Josh Helliker, Kathrin Stumreich, Lara Jacinto, Leonbattista Scacchetti, Luca Locatelli, Madiha Safdar, Mario Popham, Mónica de Miranda, Odair Rocha Monteiro, Colectivo Pariacaca (Prin Rodriguez, Fernando Criollo), Paula Preto, Roo Lewis, Sara Orsi, Sasha Chaika, Sheung Yiu, Sofia Borges, Valley Rosado, Xavier Monteiro
Artists nominated by Bienal Fotografia do Porto to be part of Futures in 2024-25
Emanuel Constantino, Inês Quente, Jéssica Gaspar, João Bragança Gil, Patrícia Assis, João Ramilo, Katya Bogachevskaya, Maria Beatriz de Vilhena, Rui Costa, Teresa Freitas
Project Rooms Artists 2024-25
Ânia Pais, Anna Lopes, Elisa Vieira, Felícia Pinho Oliveira, Guilherme Monteiro, Jana Hummel, Luca Zangrandi, Luísa Fernandes, Mariana Leitão, Rafael Paris, Renato Chorão, Rodrigo Machado da Encarnação, Willian Ferreira
Invited Experts
Isabel Castro, Lisa Barnard, Marco de Abreu, João Carrola (UTAD), Lúcia Guilhermino (FCUP), Rui Cortes (UTAD), Sonia Jeunet, Vera Carmo, Vanessa Aires
Executive Director
Marta Huet Rocha
Financial Director
Renato Ribeiro
Production Coordinator
Beatriz Almeida
Production Assistant
Bruna de Paula
Design
PLANA
Digital Consultancy
Ricardo Mendes
Architect
Nuno Pimenta - Architecture for Art
Web Design and Development
PLANA
Educational Program
Coletivo Arisca
Printing
Lumen
Editor, Proofreader, Translator
José Roseira
Assembly
Kiko, Miguel Santos, Pedro Barbosa, Alexandre Simões, Luís Figueiredo, Diogo, José Peneda
Audiovisual Technicians
Henrique Queirós, João Monteiro, Ricardo Sacramento
Photography
Pedro Sardinha
Video
Igor Sterpin
Press Relations
Myrtille Beauvert, Silver Lining

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