On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains
March 25–May 28, 2023
Rua D. Manuel II (Jardins do Palácio de Cristal)
4050-346 Porto
Portugal
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
T +351 22 507 3305
galeriamunicipal@agoraporto.pt
Compulsive Desires—On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains: A group exhibition curated by Marina Otero Verzier. From March 25 to May 28, 2023.
Compulsive Desires—On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains addresses the entanglement between extractivism and exhaustion, productivity and burn-out, across scales. Curated by Marina Otero Verzier, the exhibition takes as its starting point the ongoing lithium extraction plans in the North of Portugal and the struggles sustained by local communities for their lives and rights. Battles that emphasize how, in what has been described as “green colonialism”, the development of the “renewable energy futures”, too often involves the dispossession of communities and degradation of ecosystems.
Whereas the mining industry—and capitalism cravings—subjugates and exploits the mountain and its inhabitants treating them as resources to be extracted, the violence is turned into a force for survival for these communities through collective infrastructures and embodied rituals. If mining results in social, ecological, and mental breakdown, these practices, alongside artistic expressions, break social order to create counter worlds merging the individual and the collective, the ancestral realm and future generations, the human and more-than-human, and unleashing alternative understanding of energy.
The exhibition project features the participation of: Amável Antão, Anastasia Kubrak, Carlos Irijalba, Giuliana Rosso, Grupo de Investigação Territorial (Antonio del Giudice, Godofredo Enes Pereira, Jacob Bolton, Mingxin Li, Tiago Patatas), Heitor Cramez, Isidro Rodrigues, Jonas Staal & Radha D’Souza, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Lara Almarcegui, Leanne Wijnsma, Godofredo Enes Pereira/Lithium Triangle Studio + Nicholas Jaar, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Edmond Musasa, Medios Libres con la Gira Zapatista, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Natalia de la Rubia Kozlowska, Orlando Vieira Francisco, Povo de Covas do Barroso & Paulo Carneiro, Susana Caló, Susana Soares Pinto, Tanguy Pitavy, Tomás Saraceno & Aerocene Foundation.
Graphic design: Joana Pestana
Exhibition design: D_P_S (Diogo Passarinho, Goncalo Reynolds)
Press and media contacts
Hernâni Baptista: hernanibatista [at] agoraporto.pt
Tiago Dias dos Santos: tiagosantos [at] agoraporto.pt
