Inner Spirits and Outer Landscapes

Artists: Dawit L. Petros, Dimakatso Mathopa, Helena Uambembe, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sandra Poulson, Tuli Mekondjo, Yinka Shonibare, Zanele Muholi. Curated by Mistura Allison.

Inner Spirits and Outer Landscapes is the first curated exhibition from the FAS Collection in Lisbon, and delves into the intricate relationship between domesticity, spirituality, and self-determination. This exhibition challenges conventional views of confinement within domestic and spiritual spaces, highlighting how personal, spiritual, and material realms intersect to create zones of care, resistance, and creative expression.

Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s (1) exploration of domestic labour as both subjugation and autonomy, theexhibition reimagines everyday environments—homes, landscapes, and bodies—as powerful sites of self—assertion and spiritual practice. It presents the domestic sphere not as a place of confinement but as a spacefor radical transformation and spiritual renewal, where sovereignty and autonomy are cultivated. By engagingdeeply with themes of sovereignty, memory, and resilience, the artists in this exhibition transform traditionalnotions of domestic and external landscapes into powerful sites of living archives.Their practices consistentlyrethink the boundaries between the personal and the political, revealing how interconnected and continuallyreshaped these spaces are by those who inhabit them.

(1) Saidiya Hartman, “Manual for General Housework”, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2019).