Artist
Maria Beatriz de Vilhena
Her photographic work explores the pluralism of human nature through belief and collective identity, as well as issues related to memory and noetic.
In 2025, she was selected by GUP Magazine, as one of FRESH EYES' international talents.
Recent shows include Five Relics, Five Photographers (Museum of São Roque, Lisbon, 2025), Real Life is Not Black and White (Paris Photo, 2024) and OMNIS (Narrativa Gallery, Lisbon 2023).
Fractal
I am interested in aspects of human nature that I cannot understand or fully grasp, that don’t belong to me, or to which I do not belong. Faith, being one of the great, if not, the greatest mystery of an individual imagination is, at the same time, an apex of collective identity.
Based on a desire to understand something that I cannot intuitively find tangible, I’ve made use of photography as a consistent means to be present and delve into various religious communities. What I found, what attracted me, was not just the differences in rituals, practices, cultures, iconographies, and even languages, but instead, what was indeed shared and common to all. Thus, the choice to not centre the narrative around portraits that revealed the identity of each believer, but instead to represent the ethereal and oneiric, and in the end, the universal.
My understanding of faith not as a common belief but ultimately as a common human need, as a horizontal element, not individualizing the name that each of them may claim, relates to the conclusion that each religious belief system is but a different attempt to offer or unveil an answer to a common and universal question.
Fractal, being an element of the field of mathematics, is a geometric figure found in nature and which is composed of an object whose separate parts repeat the features of the complete whole, representing the original entity. In truth, I find myself much further away from each one of them than they are from each other. Deep down, it represents a foreign gaze onto an intimacy in which I do not participate.
They sold the farm. And left.
I am investigating my roots along the Portuguese-Spanish border in a rural and pagan backdrop. I retraced familiar footsteps, searching for traces, a common geography, and the characteristics of this ancient territory.
This story is part of a longer narrative, about family myths and tales, and the starting point of this investigation is my great-grandfather, the last family member born in Galicia. From his family's farm, he saw the river, and on the other side Portugal, so he decided to leave at age 14 never to return.
I was only there once, as a child, in a failed attempt to reconnect with the family. I returned now with my parents, only to see the farm sold, and no more traces besides the family nameplate on the cemetery.
Teresa Freitas' work explores the potentiality of colour in photography influenced by painting and cinematic language. For FUTURES, she presents two long-term projects. The first, The Flower Chronicles: Rosa damascena, was developed in small communities around the world who work with traditions based on flower production. In this series, Freitas’ images depict the historical, cultural and socioeconomic dimensions of this activity, while the second project, Cinematica, is a work-in-progress that documents subjects around the world, focusing on the visual impact of colour in composition.
Rui Costa's work explores the poetic and subjective dimension of documentary photography. The project UMA AZEITONA BORDADA EM AZUL is an emotional manifestation about his grandmother, where signs of rupture and restlessness are the matrix of a dense photographic narrative. By interconnecting images from different sources – captured directly by the artist and taken from family albums – Costa creates multiple meanings.
Maria Beatriz de Vilhena's practice examines human nature through systems of belief and collective identity. Her portfolio includes three different bodies of work: Irene is an ongoing project that probes the emotional side of memory through personal photographs and family archives; OMNIS, generated as a collective collaboration, depicts a young religious community during World Youth Day in Lisbon; and Fractal represents the diverse practices of faith and worship present in religious communities in Lisbon.
Katya Bogachevskaia embraces photography as a therapeutic process, expressing her feelings about Russia's invasion of Ukraine while also questioning her own identity. Through the rituals of her daily life, Bogachevskaia documents her emotional state, probing themes of war, emigration, a loss of home, the uncertainty of the future, guilt and death.
João Ramilo's work metaphorically appraises different socio- and economic perspectives around his own village, Louriceira, in the Portugal interior. His ongoing project From rock to bone is an ontological reflection based on his concerns about the disappearance, resignation and preservation of place.
