forms of the surrounding futures: interview with João Laia
João Laia’s inaugural show as Director of Galeria Municipal do Porto, forms of the surrounding futures, brings a very sensory, experimental take on queer exhibition-making. Understanding queerness through “an expanded perspective on futurity, as it’s something which is not yet defined and cannot be defined” Laia attempts to intertwine various strands of contemporary art through a multi-sensory, material-bodily experience.
Leaning on thinkers such as José Esteban Muñoz, Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro to explore questions of futurism, Laia embraces queerness as something that, to be politically relevant, needs to go beyond identity towards a “forward-thinking positioning [… to paraphrase Muñoz] communities and audiences are much wider than we can recognise now.” Seeing the future as something almost inherently queer in its embracing of the unknown, the curator aims to experiment with ways of perceiving it in opposition to the permacrisis view of our times and, consequently, our futures.
Laia’s new position at Galeria Municipal do Porto brings these experiments to the city’s already rich art scene. I spoke with Laia a few days after seeing the show and the late-night performance programme, which brought questions of accessibility to the forefront—something that remains a big challenge for many experimental contemporary art shows.
Starting with Sandra Mujinga’s Pervasive Light (2021), in a pitch-black room with a looped video of a cyborg-like performance, the show oscillates between lightness and darkness, exploring different ways of perception through flashing video collages, installations, and structures. Ana Vaz’s Atomic Garden (2018) stands out with its beautiful imagery of a garden in strobe speed changes. The gallery's top floor is reserved for Joana de Conceição, whose works oscillate between installation and painting practices.
From a strictly curatorial point of view, Laia brings up a very contemporary, key point: what does queering a show mean? It is not only about the works exhibited but, he says, also very much about the process: “If you want to propose a queer narrative … you also need to sort of hold queer methods of exhibition-making. You can’t really promote a narrative without enacting a narrative.” Taking this standpoint of experimentation that directly critiques the white cube, Laia’s work questions the curatorial process and how we interact with spaces, artworks, and public programmes. What this kind of approach to contemporary art will bring to the city of Porto, and the key role the city and the gallery play in the Portuguese art scene, will be most interesting to see.
Maria Kruglyak (MK): I wanted to start by asking you a little about forms of the surrounding futures. It’s a show that you first curated for the 12th Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in 2023. How was it to move it here to Porto? I would say Porto and Gothenburg are similar in many ways [being the second-biggest cities in their respective 10-million-people countries and loci of international contemporary art], and yet the exhibition acquires a completely different context in the Portuguese than in the Swedish art scene. Has it changed or developed in the move, and why did you choose to bring the show here?
João Laia (JL): I was working on this show for quite a while, and when the Gothenburg [biennale] invitation appeared, I thought it could be a good platform to experiment with the project. So, it was never something that originated in the context of Gothenburg and was therefore not attached to a specific context, but was rather a reaction against a generalised feeling—impression—urgency.
I felt quite comfortable moving it here because, despite the obvious differences [between Gothenburg and Porto], there are also commonalities. And the show itself is actually about finding commonality in diversity. It talks a lot about the idea of transition, mutation—so the fact that the show has had three different forms enhances its whole narrative as something [in] transition, [in] transformation, [undergoing] change and not a solid, fixed [thing] that happened once and then dissipated.
MK: Considering what you’re describing now—finding commonality in diversity—this is closely connected to the themes that the show touches on: queer themes, ecological themes, and bodily themes. How do you see that? And what do these kinds of different ways of seeing the future mean to you?
JL: Interesting question. I would actually argue that they’re not different [ways of seeing the future], as that is mostly what the show is doing. The ecological is [also] not [so] key in the show. I would argue the key strand is queer; although queer in a very expanded way as a perspective of futures—because it’s something that’s not defined and cannot be defined. And then the ecological comes out of the sort of queer relation that ecology and nature entail; reading ecology as a queer agency as well. Queer is the main strand in the show that then embraces many other strands as queer agencies or as queer instances.
One of the key thinkers [for the show] is José Esteban Muñoz, who, I would argue, remains quite visionary, although he was writing in the 90s. Many of his statements are grounding devices for the narrative of the show. For example, he says that queer, to have relevance and be sort of a political positioning, needs to be more than an identity marker—and identity here, again, in the expanded way, so beyond, for example, a human identity, looking at the planet as an identity as well; so, in any case, going beyond identity to become a forward-thinking sort of positioning where, Muñoz says, communities and publics are much wider than we can identify and recognise today. They need to include agencies which we actually still can’t identify at this moment. It’s this space of possibility and the unknown—and this idea of the unknown and embracing the unknown is also quite key from a queer perspective.
MK: Considering the topic of expanded queerness, I often see it as two poles: one, queer in a [physical] mutating or non-stable sense which naturally becomes futuristic, be it utopian or dystopian; and one [metaphysical] that has more to do with what our perception is and the perspectives in which we can mirror different things. forms of the surrounding futures is interesting because it feels as if it embraces many different strands, and it makes me wonder both how you see this narrative of queerness and where you see your work in this polarity of physical-metaphysical. In other words, regarded in this expanded queer perspective, do you see yourself interested in queer shows that remain bodily, physical, or is it more something related to this very broad beyond-physical queer perspective?
JL: Well, yeah, the body is essential. Maybe you have a more detached perspective and you can analyse and segment different strands. For me, it’s all like one weird kind of entity. However, materiality has been one of the essential aspects of my work and research for quite a while.
It is part of queering, and in this sense of queering the white cube and queering the exhibition as a format, in the sense that exhibitions and the white cube were (and mostly are) designed to privilege the eye and sight. And the show, as many other shows that I have worked on, is very interested in questioning that by enhancing other senses and sort of inviting audiences to a much more bodily, embodied, sensory experience.
Sound, for example, has always been very key—and it remains key here, too. The way sound works as a disembodied presence that is very impactful physically in your body in the way that the bass is, for example; but also in how it creates this very contaminated atmosphere where you might not really understand where the source of a sound is initially and where you very often, depending on where you are in the space, can hear two or three sounds simultaneously which, together, create a soundscape meaning something else.
There is, for example, the piece by María Jerez—the central one, towards the end of the room. [It is] this sort of landscape, mysterious landscape, made of different fabrics that hint at the presence of bodies or at the materialisation of a body that you can’t really identify. It’s animated with sounds, with lights, and with motion. So, the bodily is really very key overall. And again, it’s not detached—the idea is to really offer other ways of perception that challenge the very normative regime of visuality which the white cube and exhibitions often offer.
In a way, if you want to propose a queer narrative, I would argue [that] you also need to sort of hold queer methods of exhibition-making. You can’t really promote a narrative without enacting a narrative. They are both really feeding off each other and, together, realising what I wanted to explore.
MK: That’s very interesting, because when visiting the show I thought it was very overwhelming at times, in this truly multi-sensory way. Take, for example, the piece by P. Staff—On Venus (2019) [which consists in a room with a mirrored floor and neon-yellow lights with a screen in the back wall showing a 13-minute-long film of gruesome footage of the meat industry through very surreal, warped colours]. I was watching it for quite some time and I realised that people don’t stop to watch it, but rather enter and leave, because it’s very intense. It also made me think more about queering the exhibition as part of the process of exhibition-making, of the exhibition itself and of people’s way of interacting with it.
JL: Staging is quite key, and so is the idea of immersion—immersion rather than this very detached analytical, purely cognitive approach to exhibition-making. I’m interested in the bouncing back between the cognitive, the experiential, the sensory, the highly subjective, and even the emotional.
Sound is very important. I think that the sound of Sandra Mujinga’s work [Pervasive Light (2021)] sets the tone for the show, and so does the darkness of the piece. And then you have the contrast when you leave the darkness again into a more lit environment. Maybe you don’t notice the filters immediately, because they don’t have a colour; they just decrease the outside light. But there is an eeriness staging a sort of liminal space, where you kind of recognise where you are but at the same time feel there is something bizarre that you might not immediately pinpoint. And that’s sort of a productive staged situation to build a show from.
There was someone that was describing the feeling they had once they had exited the black box of Mujinga’s piece as if an eclipse was happening, and that for me was really, really good to hear—because for me it’s precisely signalling this eerie liminal situation. I never thought of the atmosphere and the light intensity as echoing an eclipse—it was quite cool that someone mentioned that.
MK: Yes, Mujinga’s Pervasive Light has this disorientating quality. Actually, in different points of the show, walking through it, the works also push your body to different places, and I think it’s strongest there in the beginning, exiting this black box, fumbling to find your way.
JL: There the idea was really to be very clear about entering another space which is not trying to echo “the real” reality—it’s going elsewhere while not evading the real. [Staying] very grounded in the real, [the entrance] offers something else, or stages something else. That’s why I wanted the filters—so I could work with light; the gallery has this very cool particularity of the large windows, [and] I didn’t want to block out the outside space, [creating] this interaction between being inside in what could be this very strange, dreamlike, psychedelic kind of space but [being able to] see the garden, to see the people walking in the garden. Once again, [creating] this liminal space in-between, a bit like daydreaming: you’re here but you’re not here. Those kinds of dynamics, I think, are productive because they question all our assumed securities about categories, understandings, what things are, what things are not; and suddenly you’re in a space which is less clear about everything in a very simple way.
MK: Turning to the evening performances at Passos Manuel that were part of the inauguration programme of the exhibition: where did the idea come from to do this? And how did it work—was it also from this perspective of the liminal space of instability and non-reality?
JL: The performance program is trying to do something else even though I would argue [that] the show has a performative layer to it, too. My interest with the performances was, instead, this sort of intensity that comes out of people being in the same place at the same time—this sort of ephemeral community of strangers that get to be together.
In Gothenburg, the performance programme was much more precise. It was divided into two moments. The first was called “A Calling” and took place towards the end of the afternoon in a public space. It was sort of this intro / presentation / invitation for people to join in. The second moment was in the main venue of the biennale in the evening and it was called “A Celebration.” So there were these two poles: the intro and the celebratory so to say.
In Porto there was, once again, this mutation of the programme where both were mixed together. Ania Nowak’s To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto) had previously been part of “A Calling,” and became now the first performance of the program. KEM Collective’s Dragana Bar in Gothenburg was the last of performance of “A Celebration”—here [in Porto] they were both moments were combined in a single event. Joana da Conceição was part of “A Celebration,” and María Jerez only performed here [in Porto].
I didn’t title the performance programme but, if I had, it would have leaned more towards the celebratory. For example, Dragana Bar really embraces the idea of safe spaces, of clubbing as a platform to encounter the unknown and yet be safe and be happy with the stranger, with whomever you might encounter and whomever you might experiment with in terms of your own identity. So, all these layers and possibilities that nightlife offers are manifested [in KEM Collective’s piece], whereas the rest of the performance programme echoed more what the show does with the coming together of very different positions, experimentations and agencies, building a whole out of diversity—which, again, echoes the idea of ecology as a whole made out of very diverse elements that come together.
So, that sort of ecological perspective via a queer reading also manifests in the performance programme. And quite a few people commented on that, how different the performances were, and how they felt it was interesting to do a performance programme which was not linear in its commonality but actually emphasised difference.
MK: Yes, I think that is echoed in the spatial exhibition as there is that counterpoint. How do you see the programme continuing? Because I understand that apart from guided tours there are also quite a few workshops planned—what’s going to happen in the next months?
JL: In the summer, the public programme is going to chill a little bit, although there is an event curated by my colleague, the curator of the public programme, Matilde Seabra, and Joana da Conceição: a workshop for children based on Joana’s work and how she uses imagination as a leading tool for her critique of the history of painting, the history of visual culture, the way we engage with images and how, again, the body is essential in our relationship with images rather than [just] vision.
We’re also going to have a big performance day on the 28 September. The programme is still not fully defined, but at this moment we have eleven performances. It’s going to take over the whole gallery space, both indoors and outdoors, and will once again—this time literally—be about questioning the gallery as a stage rather than a mere displaying device.
Thereafter we have three solo shows opening on 26 October: Vivian Caccuri, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, and Rita Caldo. Caldo is the inaugural exhibition in the new room dedicated to artists based in Porto. Caccuri takes over the first-floor gallery and Saldanha the large ground floor, in his first large-scale institutional show ever. Caldo also has her institutional premiere and this is also the first solo exhibition by Caccuri in Portugal.
MK: Are these solo shows going to be interconnected?
JL: Yes and no. No, in the sense that they are solos, so in that sense they are autonomous. They are however connected in the sense that sound is quite key in different ways—nonetheless, sound could be seen as a thread, particularly maybe Caccuri and Saldanha, even if Caldo will also have a relevant sound element. And then in a more generic way: it’s another way of trying to enhance the ability of the gallery space not to be merely a visual space but to be something more.
MK: Is this part of your vision for the gallery to move more into sound and bring in different ways of perception that go beyond sight?
JL: Yes, but I’m not going to turn the gallery into a sound gallery; there are many ways of doing that. I chose sound as a starting point because it is so relevant in the Porto art scene due to the huge amount of artists working with sound. I wanted to embrace and reflect that.
Seeing it more broadly, immersiveness is probably the more permanent strategy. Sound will appear in some shows, in the performance programme, concerts… The first thing I did since I started here was the concert evening to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution on April 25th. That idea also came out of this recognition of the importance of sound in the city’s scene. So, yes, sound will be a very important element, but it will not be the single strand of work in the gallery. And after a while maybe we do a painting show, why not [laughing]! Actually, we have one just now with Joana da Conceição!
MK: As someone who’s come to Portugal from abroad, I see the contemporary art scene here as very, very active and very impressive—there’s a lot of ground-breaking things happening in contemporary Portuguese art. You worked abroad for 17 years, and now you’ve come back for this position as Director of the Municipal Gallery of Porto. How do you perceive the contemporary art scene here after having worked elsewhere? And how do you see the scene in Porto in comparison to the one in Lisbon?
JL: Yeah, but I wouldn’t put it like I was away and then I came back. I worked extensively in Portugal throughout these years—both in Lisbon and in Porto—and I always worked with Portuguese artists when I was abroad. So, I never felt I was really detached even though I was not here. Coming back wasn’t really a surprise, and I still felt quite comfortable and familiar with what was and is happening here.
In terms of possible differences between Porto and Lisbon, the sound component is one, but in general I think it’s very difficult to draw these parallels because there isn’t one scene in Porto—there are really plenty [of scenes]. And likewise with Lisbon—I don’t think at this point one can say “the Lisbon scene is looking into this.”
There are different histories: Porto has a very strong artist-led scene with project spaces and artist-run spaces; at the same time, the biggest institution is also in Porto. So, it’s interesting to have both of these two sides co-inhabiting in the same scene. Lisbon has been gaining more artist-run initiatives—and there are more institutions than Porto. For example, commercial galleries are stronger [and more numerous] in Lisbon than in Porto. But there’s quite a few in Porto that have an important place not just in the city but in the country and internationally, throughout the years and still now. This sort of structural dynamics are easier to identify, I would say.
MK: And the Municipal Gallery has a role to play in these dynamics. How do you see that role? Is it something you're thinking of at all? Or is it something that’s kind of yet to come?
JL: Of course, I must. My role and that of my team as the city’s Contemporary Art Department is significant. We have the gallery, the sound library, and then the Pláka platform—which is quite complex, also operating outside of Porto and Portugal, making it perhaps less known outside the city but hugely important for the scene here.
We are also a funding body, via Pláka, with production grants for artists; programming grants which would go to artist-run spaces and other independent spaces; grants for international presentations of artists, curators, or artist-run spaces if they go collectively; and residency grants.
On top of that, we have the collection—the acquisition programme—which we also manage. The acquisition has two strands: one in which artists apply, submitting up to two works to be bought each year, and one where the committee buys directly from the galleries of Porto. Recently, since my arrival, we have expanded the acquisition programme to acquire works presented in our gallery spaces, something which was lacking in the thorough mapping of the city’s exhibition and production activities via the collection / acquisition policy.
We’re also preparing a couple of new initiatives: two new exhibition rooms which will double the amount of exhibitions we can present. This October we will open a new exhibition space in the building of Galeria Municipal do Porto dedicated exclusively to artists living in Porto which haven’t benefited from an institutional solo exhibition. The idea is to use this new exhibition space as a laboratory: keeping an experimental approach while providing an institutional back-up in terms of resources for the artist. That’s something I identified immediately: I wanted to have a space where I could support artists based here that hadn’t yet had their first solo institutional exhibition; and in this way connect the experimental artist-run spaces / curatorial-run spaces with the institutional framework. I had the issue of scale with the current galleries, one being 1200 square metres and the other 450—they were too large for a first institutional show. This new exhibition space has about 200 square metres, which is perfect for what we want to do. In 2026 we will open another exhibition gallery in the east part of the city—Campanhã—included in a large new cultural event named Matadouro, which is being built as we speak. This new exhibition room has 500 square meters.
We are also preparing a city-wide event for the end of this year. We’re still thinking of how to name it, but the idea is to create an moment where we would embrace all the ecosystem of contemporary art in Porto: the experimental artist- and curatorial-led spaces, commercial galleries, and the institutions. So, we, the Department of Contemporary Art, have been working on a contemporary art map for the city for quite a few years—it was initiated by Guilherme Blanc. And we’re finally going to launch it with this event, which organises the city’s art agents geographically, mixing all the three different typologies of spaces and suggesting pathways to visit all the spaces in three different days. So, it’s a three-day event that maps both online and on a physical, printed object; a way to navigate the city—discover the city—and, hopefully, widen the audiences of the rich art scene here. So, yeah, this is more or less what we as a Department are trying to do: embracing and supporting the scene here.
MK: Circling back to your curatorial practice, what is it that you are most excited to explore both in your role here and in Porto, and looking ahead in your career as a curator?
Various things. I’m still quite keen on exhibition-making. I’m very keen on performance programmes. There’s a magical element to performance—this intensity that I mentioned before—which I’m really interested in. I’m also very keen on long-term relationships with artists; there are artists I’ve been working with for many years now, and it’s also a magical, beautiful, and very fulfilling kind of relationship that can develop throughout the years while both of us change, and yet we are able to sustain a productive and meaningful exchange.
I’m also interested in this new expansion in my scope of action: not only a curator but also an art agent: how to be very grounded in a specific context, how to be in dialogue, sustain, and strengthen it. This context is somewhat new for me; I’ve never worked like this, and it’s very exciting.
I’m interested in mixing disciplines. The event I mentioned on 28 September will include moving image, sound, food, and other languages that may be more associated with performance, but it was also kind of organised as a film screening in the sense that we’re putting different things in succession and organising them in blocks. For me this creation of something which is not very clear to anyone, including me, is very exciting—and to see what comes out of that. Maybe if I would summarise it to one thing: to experiment is what excites me most as a curator.
MK: Very nice. Thank you very much for this conversation, and good luck with everything. Sounds like an exciting year ahead.
JL: Thank you for your interest. And come visit us!
Maria Kruglyak é investigadora, crítica e escritora especializada em arte e cultura contemporânea. É editora-chefe e fundadora de Culturala, uma revista de arte e teoria cultural em rede que experimenta uma linguagem direta e accessível para a arte contemporânea. É mestre em História da Arte pela SOAS, Universidade de Londres, onde se focou na arte contemporânea do Leste e Sudeste Asiático. Completou um estágio curatorial e editorial no MAAT em 2022. Atualmente trabalha como redatora freelancer de arte.
Proofreading: Diogo Montenegro.
formas dos futuros ao redor, exhibition views Galeria Municipal do Porto, 2024. Photos: Dinis Santos. Courtesy Galeria Municipal do Porto.