Archive

Under the Aegis of the Place

Nuno Sousa Vieira

OPEN CLASS
NOVEMBER 26TH OF 2025, 9.30AM
ROOM 7 OF EP.1 – ESAD.CR

At a time when the transformation of places, people, appearances, values, jobs and existence are dominant factors, it is curious that what remains a constant element, enhancing recognition of the period in which we live, is precisely its changing nature. This is not always a metamorphic change; sometimes phenomena such as relocation arise, in which attempts are made at all costs to preserve characteristics or situations that have been displaced to different places. This is also evident in the artistic phenomenon, in which, time and again, objects developed for a particular space are, without the slightest modesty, integrated into another place, without this being comprehensible, either from a conceptual or formal point of view, or in terms of their viewing. The dominant value is commodification. This displacement to which the works are subject interests me, appearing in my work as a kind of ‘nomadism’ with site-specific characteristics that reference it. The objects I have been developing have a home, which is my studio, and it is there that their meaning can be fully realised.

Nuno Sousa Vieira (Leiria 1971) Lives and works between Leiria and Lisbon. Visual artist, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL), Integrated Researcher at the CIEBA Painting Centre. PhD in Painting from FBAUL.
His most recent exhibitions took place in Portugal and Brazil, namely: 25 de Abril (2025), Ateliê Fidalga, São Paulo; Sem pisar o chão (2025), Appleton Square, Lisbon; Um entre nós (2022), Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Tenho a vista cansada (2022), Galeria Mul.ti.plo, Rio de Janeiro, in Águeda, the exhibition entitled Amanhã é muito tempo (2023), part of the exhibition cycle Desenho Como Pensamento; at the IPT Art and Image Centre Gallery, Tomar, Pelo que não se vê (2023) and at the 3+1 Gallery, Lisbon, Inhabitans ou imitar o andar (2023).
My artistic practice is strongly linked to issues of context – production and visibility. In this sense, the development of his exhibitions emerges as a tool capable not only of linking the work to a time and a geography, but also, speculatively, of projecting other times and other geographies, seeking and achieving an inclusive positioning. The relationships between the visible (what is before us and belongs to the present) and the invisible (what is hidden and calls us to other geographical and temporal latitudes) are problematic issues present in his praxis.