Second Nature: Portuguese Contemporary Art from the EDP Foundation Collection

The first group exhibition of Portuguese art of the 21st century to be presented in the United States, Second Nature is both a portrait of recent artistic production in Portugal and an exploration of the relationship between human culture and the environment. Working in media ranging from watercolor to photography to video, artists in the exhibition consider the tension between the concept of an untouched natural world—a popular subject in art history—and the ways humans have dominated and reshaped the environment using modern technology.

The exhibition includes approximately 30 works and is the first to go on tour from the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon, which opened to the public in October 2016. It is curated by art historian Luisa Especial and MAAT Director Pedro Gadanho, formerly Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The exhibition brings together works created over the past two decades by sixteen artists from different generations, each of whom employs modern technology and materials to capture, filter, and reinvent the natural world, thereby generating a “second nature.”

Highlights include an installation centered on an orange tree root by sculptor Alberto Carneiro (1937–2017); two multimedia sculptures by artist Vasco Araújo (b. 1975) that explore the relationship between nature and colonialism; a 24-foot multi-perspectival drawing by Gabriela Albergaria (b. 1965); and arresting photographs of illegal fishing and hunting traps by João Grama (b. 1975).

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website