ART | Curators from Portuguese museums share experiences in Macau

A group of curators from Portuguese contemporary art museums will be sharing their experiences and collection expertise in Macau, as another edition of the InFLUXUS project has been launched.
Organized by Macau-based non-profit cultural organization “Babel,” the project aims at providing an annual international exchange of ideas on art and culture between Beijing, Macau, Hong Kong, Lisbon and Porto.
This year’s edition kicked off on Wednesday and, according to a press release, the arrival of curators from Portuguese art museums is one of the project’s highlights.
Coming from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Center, the Berardo Collection Museum, and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, curators will share their experiences and information about their collections this weekend at the Handover Gifts Museum of Macau.
Working with the theme “Memory and Archive,” curators will be discussing the thought process and methodology behind their own collections. Ruth Rosengarten, who will be representing Lisbon’s Berardo Collection Museum, brings works by Marcel Duchamp, Boltanski, Vivan Sundaram and Daniel Blaufuks to the discussions.
Patrícia Rosas, curator of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Center, will be presenting ideas on a selection of Portuguese artists, namely Rui Calçada Bastos, Noé Sendas, Ana Hatherly, Fernando José Pereira and Rui Valério.
Babel Artistic Director Margarida Saraiva will deliver a presentation on contemporary art from China and Macau. Curators’ presentations and discussions will be followed by video and film screenings.
This year’s edition will also feature more artistic residencies, as local artists Ieong Man Pan and Peng Yun will be traveling to Portugal to participate in equivalent programs. Babel said in a press release that it hopes to further explore this part of the program, to include more artists from mainland China as well as Portuguese-speaking countries.
While in Portugal, participants will visit each of the contemporary art museums that have partnered with Babel. They will also travel to Porto to attend film production and editing workshops at the Portuguese Catholic University’s School of Arts.
In Macau, students will develop their creative skills at the University of Saint Joseph’s Faculty of Creative Industries, where a scriptwriting workshop will be organized to help students create narratives connecting the cities involved in the exchange program.
Works developed by students and artists will be screened in Beijing, Macau, Lisbon, and Porto between October and November.
InFLUXUS program engages students, teachers, curators and film directors in the intercultural exchange and creative learning processes.  CP