Gabriela Albergaria
Albergaria's work involves one territory: Nature. A nature manipulated, planted, transported, set in hierarchy, catalogued, studied, felt and recalled through the ongoing exploration of gardens/cultural landscapes in photography, drawing and sculpture. The artist views gardens/cultural landscapes as elaborated constructs, representational systems and descriptive mechanisms that epitomize a set of fictional beliefs that are employed to represent the natural world. Gardens are also environments dedicated to leisure and study, cultural and social processes that produce a historical understanding of what is knowledge and what is pleasure. More generally, the images of gardens and plant species employed by the artist are used as devices to reveal processes of cultural change through which visions of nature are produced. Mediated by representation systems they generate different versions of what we see as landscape—itself a complex system of material structures and visual hierarchies, cultural constructs that define the framing of our visual field.
Gabriela Albergaria is a Portuguese artist based in Lisbon and London. Having completed a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto, she held numerous residencies, such as Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2000/2001) / Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2004) / Villa Arson, Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Nice (2008) / The University of Oxford Botanic Garden, in colla- boration with The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (2009/2010) and Winter Workspace, Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, New York (2012), Residency Unlimited, New York, USA (2015), and Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia (2015)
A selection of her recent solo shows includes
2019 “…an adventure in which humans are only one kind of participant…” Solo show at Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisboa Portugal
2019 Desencaminharte 2018 Permanent piece at Parque de Lazer do Castelinho, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal
2018/2019 La Fabrique du Paysage Galerie Duchamp centre d' art contemporain de la Ville d'Yvetot, France. Curated by Alice Mallet and Julie Faitot
2018 Inanimate Object, or the complete cicle of the soil, Sheffield Park and Garden National Trust, UK. commissioned by diep~haven in partnership with Sheffield Park and Garden, with support from Arts Council England. Curated by Rosie Hermon and Alice Mallet.
2018 Amazônia: Novos Viajantes, MUBE, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia (São Paulo, SP), curated by Cauê Alves and Lucia Lohmann
2018 Segunda Natureza, Kreeger Museum, Washington DC. Itinerante show from EDP Collection (Portugal) Curated by Luisa Especial
2018 Pinch Pinch Pinch, Projecto Intervenções, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo, Brasil
2017 Endless Infinity, Museu Nacional Grão Vasco, Viseu, Portugal / Peça para Perséfone, open air installation at Praça D. Duarte, Viseu,
Portugal (in collaboration with Nuno Vasconcelos, Pedro Tudela) (2017)
2016 Ah, Al Fin Naturaleza, Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia, Comissariado por/Curated by José Roca
2015 Ah, At Last, Nature, Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, Évora, Portugal curated by José Roca / L’espace est une impasse où son temps s’abolit, Kunstverein Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen, Alemanha / O Balanço da Árvore Exagera a Tempestade, (Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo)
2014 No hay tal cosa como la naturaleza, Hacienda La Trinidad Parque Cultural, Caracas, 2013 / Reverse Position (Invertir la Posición), Galeria Wu, Lima, 2012 / Forking Paths, Vera Cortês Art Agency, Lisbon.
Her artworks are in these international collections:
Colecção Norlinda e José Lima, São João da Madeira, Portugal / Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brasil / Museu Nacional dos Açores, Portugal / Colecção Luis Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, Portugal / Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahía, Salvador, Brasil / KFW bankenngrupe, Frankfurt/ Lars Pahlman, Finland / BESart- Banco Espirito Santo, Lisboa / CAM, Centro de Arte Moderna Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa / CAPC, Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, Portugal / Colecção PLMJ, Lisboa, Portugal / Perez Collection, Miami, USA / Colección Navacerrada, Spain / Colección Coca Cola, Spain / Coleção António Cachola, Elvas, Portugal / Fundação EDP, Lisbon, Portugal / Várias colecções particulares/ Several private collection