Morphogenesis: Curated by João Laia

Gabriel Abrantes | Caroline Achaintre | Vasco Araújo | Irma Blank | José Pedro Cortes | Debora Delmar Corp. | Alexandre Estrela | Karlos Gil | Sasha Litvintseva | Maria Loboda | Arnout Meijer | Adrien Missika | Saskia Noor van Imhoff | Diana Policarpo | Mariana Silva | Marta Soares | Tris Vonna-Michell

We are experiencing a critical period of change. Below the surface, tectonic forces have intensified unforeseeably, questioning previously stable contours of reality. Life is being defined by a sweeping notion of crisis which underlines the multilayered social embeddedness of ecology, economy, politics, representation and science.

We are left to inhabit an interstice of fluid boundaries and to witness the friction of opposing movements and different perceptions of space and time; a transitional moment of hybrid conditions and arrangements in which new entities are taking shape. The word morphogenesis describes the development process of an organism’s form. It is a concept originally found in biology which here signals the current moment of transition.

This exhibition focuses on ideas such as transformation and difference, analysing the present and speculating about the future by looking at how change is affecting our notion of what life is and what it might become. The selection of artists included analyses how affect, capital, images, language, objects and systems are being constituted and transformed while circulating. Their combined investigations create a polyphonic map embracing the complexities and paradoxes of our current condition.