Quem tem medo?

14 may-28 june 2025

terça — sábado • 15h00-19h00

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Horário: 14h — 19h
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Inauguração: 14 MAI, 18h — 21h
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Conversa 'PODIA SER NA TATE MAS É AQUI #2' c/ curador Alexandre Melo: 5 JUN, 19h
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Booking: €

“Evil is banal.
The only mystery
is the mystery of good.”

– Adília Lopes

Who’s Afraid? presents works by Bartolomeu Gusmão and Diogo Nogueira in an encounter born of a shared artistic practice and an ongoing dialog between the two authors. The exhibition proposes a space where painting reveals itself as a place to pause, observe and listen – a way of inhabiting the present with attention and openness.

The question that gives the exhibition its title is a silent summons to the visitor. It doesn’t define fear, nor does it seek to overcome it, but rather puts it in abeyance, as a starting point for thinking about what limits us, what diverts us or silences us. Fear not as an obstacle, but as a latent tension in the experience of desiring, imagining and creating.

The works, conceived individually, acquire new meaning as a whole: they appear as fragments of the same sensitive landscape. The installation, made up of paintings, offers itself as a common territory – a place of convergence, contemplation and reunion with what remains unsaid.

In this gesture of sharing, Who’s Afraid? suggests the possibility of a renewed look. Not to illustrate certainties, but to open up a space where thought can move, where mystery does not frighten, but invites.

Bartolomeu de Gusmão (1993) was born in Carcavelos, Lisbon, and studied at the António Arroio Art School.

He lives and works in Caldas da Rainha, where he studied at ESAD.CR, completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Fine Arts. He has been exhibiting regularly, collectively and individually, since 2013, and is represented in private collections in Portugal, Brazil and Italy. He works mainly through the mediums of painting and drawing, where he explores themes linked to the elements: rock, desert, water, vegetation and the relationship between the body and the natural element. Through images that work from the perspective of the landscape, figures and symbols are explored, as well as references to the history of painting. Between figuration and abstraction, gesture emerges as a way of capturing the forces that generate plastic production.

Diogo Nogueira (b. 1999, Oporto) lives and works between Oporto and Paris, where he is currently finishing his master’s degree in Fine Arts on a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Diogo Nogueira’s work explores themes such as Image, Iconography and the erotic, with an approach marked by humor and the creation of shared mythologies. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, drawing, ceramics and installation, seeking to create new collective spaces through image. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisbon), Galeria Presença (Porto), and participated in group exhibitions at CAPC Sede (Coimbra), Centro de Arte Oliva (Aveiro) and Espaço Mira (Porto). His work is included in collections such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Porto Municipal Collection and the Norlinda and José Lima Collection.

Alexandre Melo, born in Lisbon, is an art critic, curator, essayist and professor. He has a degree in Economics, a PhD in Sociology and teaches Sociology of Art and Contemporary Culture at ISCTE. Since the 1980s, he has written for the main Portuguese publications, including Jornal de Letras, the weekly Expresso and Público, and international publications such as El País, and is also a regular contributor to international contemporary art magazines such as Flash Art, Artforum and Parkett. He was the author of the radio program “Os Dias da Arte”. Commissioner of the Portuguese representation at the 1997 Venice Biennale, with Julião Sarmento, and at the 2004 São Paulo Biennale, with Rui Chafes and Vera Mantero. Curator of the collections of Banco Privado (on deposit at the Serralves Museum) and the Ellipse Foundation. Collaborator in writing the screenplay for “O Fantasma” by João Pedro Rodrigues. Co-director of “Fratelli” by Gabriel Abrantes. Screenwriter and author of the texts for the documentaries Colecção Geração 25 de Abril. He was Cultural Advisor to Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates from 2005 until the end of his mandate.