Silvana Pestana

Pestana’s research centralizes around humans who live in deprived areas. Her objective is to highlight the devastating environments in which people suffer due to the vulnerability of both state and social passivity. She relies on the worldview and mythology engrained in each community who share their unique story, and in turn helps emphasise human wealth above material. For Pestana, the greatest irony of globalization is perhaps the fact that it has served to increase the gaps that separate us. Her projects seek to create empathy by highlighting ideas that are universal: the fragility of love, love of our loved ones, suffering in the face of loss and the desire of a better life. ...

MADRAGOA is a contemporary art gallery founded in 2016 in the homonymous neighborhood of Lisbon’s historical center. Since its beginning, the gallery has been an early supporter of a number of international young artists such as Adrián Balseca, Rodrigo Hernández, Renato Leotta, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Joanna Piotrowska, and Yuli Yamagata, whose first productions and exhibition have been produced and promoted by the gallery and often presented for the first time in Portugal. Moreover, Madragoa launched the careers of young Portuguese artists such as Sara Chang Yan, Luís Lázaro Matos, Gonçalo Preto, and Jaime Welsh, giving them visibility on the international scene. From its peripheral location in Europe, MADRAGOA’s project focuses on how to set a deep conversation with the city and its extraordinary potential, setting a dialogue between global artistic practices and local craftsmanship and ideas. The gallery always created experiences of research and production for its artists locally and promotes its program also through the participation in a number of international art fairs, gallery exchanges, and exhibition projects. MADRAGOA is currently recognized as one of the most innovative realities in the Portuguese art scene, while it succeeded to obtain visibility internationally throughout its years of its activity. At the moment, the gallery actively represents artists from Portugal, Italy, Ecuador, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Brazil and South Africa. ...