Miguel Bonneville
Miguel Bonneville | ‘Animals Landscapes and Saints’ (AnB 2025)
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Booking: €
Miguel Bonneville has made music, videos, and presented performances and shows in a wide variety of national and international contexts, exhibiting drawings, paintings, and photography in galleries, museums, bookstores, and other unconventional spaces. For various reasons, in the year he would have celebrated twenty years of work, he took a step back and withdrew. The party never happened.
The story could end here. In Miguel Bonneville’s case, Teatro Praga proposes to change the course of events, not so much to celebrate, but rather to remember and resist. Recognizing the importance of his fictional work based on autobiographical assumptions, as well as the plurality of forms through which it materializes, Teatro Praga, in partnership with the companies Cão Solteiro .and Plataforma285, invited the artist to be the Artista no Bairro 2025 from September 29 to November 7 and to do an artistic and creative residency at the Cão Solteiro . residências 120 and at Rua das Gaivotas 6.
In the context of this residency, which begins on September 29 and ends on November 7, Bonneville will coordinate three free public sessions, inserted on the ongoing research for his current project Animals Landscapes and Saints. On October 12, at the Cão Solteiro . residências 120 space, he will moderate a conversation between three artistic projects from different disciplines, coming from various corners of the country, to think about what it means to expand a neighborhood.
On October 20, in the late afternoon, Miguel Bonneville will present his Menu de Artista proposal, in another installment of Rua das Gaivotas 6, where he will talk about art and delicacies. On November 1, he invites the public to participate in a listening session at Rua das Gaivotas 6. Finally, on the 6th of the same month, to close his stay at Misericórdia, we welcome a moment of sharing the materials created throughout this month.
In parallel with the Artista no Bairro 2025 program, this October we are hosting the retrospective ‘‘Did you miss me?‘, which looks at Miguel Bonneville’s artistic production between 2004 and 2025.
In the end, if we survive, maybe there will be a party. If not, at least other stories have been written and made.
Expanding the Neighbourhood
12 oct. 5—7 PM
Cão Solteiro . residências 120
Free admission, subject to room capacity
Being in the neighborhood—in this case, in the parish of Misericórdia—also means thinking about what lies beyond it: what it lacks, what contrasts with what is experienced, what could change and be transformed.
In this session, three projects operating in different territories from the north to the south of the country meet in the neighborhood to share experiences, practices, and ways of imagining together. An expansion of the neighborhood without having to leave it.
Carreiros para Futuros Ancestrais – A project by Magda Henriques and Alastair Fuad-Luke, based in Carreiros (Paredes de Coura, Alto Minho), promotes democratic micro-actions through artistic and cultural practices.
Casa do Terreiro – Residências / O Homem que Guardava as Águas – sound and visual research led by Susana Guardado and collaborators, focusing on the Pranto River Valley (Lower Mondego) and surrounding parishes, based on their vast natural, cultural, and intangible heritage.
Escola Provisória para Nada –Based in Sabóia (Odemira), it is a non-productive school in transition, open to the creative use of leisure and artistic-performative practice. It is a school as a space for reform, resistance, and collective creation, conceived by Sara Vaz and Marco Ballesteros.
Menu de Artista
20 oct, 7PM
Rua das Gaivotas 6, Lisboa
Free admission, upon prior registration
Artists also have their favorite foods and drinks. In MENU DE ARTISTA, we ask those who visit RG6 to hold an open session about their favorite delicacy. Let’s open our mouths for a tasting!
Listening session
1 nov, 4 — 8PM
Rua das Gaivotas 6, Lisboa
Free admission, subject to room capacity
For four hours, the audience is invited to immerse themselves in soundscapes inspired by m̶i̶g̶u̶e̶l̶ bonneville’s multidisciplinary research as part of the Animals Landscapes and Saints project.
A proposal in which talking, using cell phones, or any other electronic device is not allowed. Just listen. The body can, however, let itself be moved by listening, if that makes sense.
Animals Landscapes and Saints
Sharing creative materials
6 nov, 8—9.30PM
Rua das Gaivotas 6, Lisboa
Free admission, subject to room capacity
Informal sharing of materials developed during the Artista no Bairro residency, in the context of Bonneville’s new project: Animals Landscapes and Saints. A work centered around the question: what is, or can be, a saint today?
Miguel Bonneville (Porto, 1985): transdisciplinary artist who creates autofictional works centered on the deconstruction and reconstruction of identity, exploring questions of gender, death, and spirituality. His work combines multiple artistic languages, including writing, music, video, and performance. Since 2003, he has presented his work nationally and internationally, especially the serial projects Family Project, Miguel Bonneville, and The Importance of Being.
He received the Rede Ex Aequo Prize (2015) for the performances Fear and Feminisms, in collaboration with Maria Gil, and The Importance of Being Simone de Beauvoir.
He studied Acting at the Academia Contemporânea do Espectáculo (2000-2003), complementing his studies with courses in: Visual Arts at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation / Creativity and Artistic Creation Program (2006), Autobiographies, Life Stories and Artists’ Lives at CIES-ISCTE (2008), Archive – Organization and Maintenance at Citeforma (2013), Cyborgs, Sex and Society at FCSH (2016), and Philosophy and Art at Mute (2017), among others.
He received grants from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Centro Nacional da Cultura – Jovens Criadores, the Funchal City Council – Artistic Creation/Writing Grant, and the Culture Moves Europe program.
He was part of the Artistic Direction of Teatro do Silêncio (2018-2023), and of the group of artists represented by Galeria 3+1 Arte Contemporânea (2009-2013) and by the contemporary dance structure Eira (2004-2006).
He made films and videos such as Camera Obscura (2023), Um medo com duas grandes faces (2022), Traça (2016), A landscape of failure (2008), among others. He also received funding from the ICA’s Screenwriting and Cinematographic Works Development Support (2021) to develop the script of his original idea for a feature-length fiction film, Landscape with Yellow Birds (2021-2023), produced by Cedro Plátano.
He published the books: The Diaries of C.C. Rausch (Corpos Editora, 2006), Essays on Holiness (Sr. Teste, 2021), The Personal is Political (Douda Correria, 2021), The Book of Daniel and Other Texts (Urutau, 2024); as well as the artist editions Jérôme, Olivier et moi (Homesession, 2008), Notes of a Suicidal Primate (2017), and, with Teatro do Silêncio, Dissection of a Swan (2018), Lament of the Cyborg (2021), Recovering the Body (2021), and Darkroom (2022).
He contributed various texts to Portuguese magazines Flanzine, WrongWrong, Dobra, Cine Qua Non, and Faces de Eva, as well as to the Brazilian magazine Periódicus, among other publications.
He was an artist-in-residence at Sítio das Artes, CAMJAP/Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, 2007), Homesession (Barcelona, 2008), Mugatxoan/Fundação de Serralves (Porto, 2010), Festival Transeuropa2012 (Hildesheim, 2012), Arts Printing House (Vilnius, 2013), Arte y Desarrollo (Madrid, 2014), and La Box (Bourges, 2018), among others.
The Artista no Bairro program, launched in 2018 by Rua das Gaivotas 6, Teatro Cão Solteiro, and Plataforma285, aims to contribute to increasing the visibility of creators through a €4,500 grant and a month-long residency shared between Cão Solteiro and Rua das Gaivotas 6, as well as expanding the reach of artistic activity produced in the geographical area where these three structures are located.
Artista no Bairro has already supported creators such as Daniel Pizamiglio and Romain Beltrão Teule, Batata, Maurícia | Neves, Ana Libório, Tita Maravilha, Truta no Buraco, and Natacha Campos.