SAT 12 APR
Talk at Galeria Alfaia, Loulé
17 APR > 16 MAY / 9h30 > 16h00
Minas de Sal Gema de Loulé
Exhibition / Free Admittance
OPEN TALK / SALARIS – Ficções a partir do Sal
Artists Maura Grimaldi, Natália Loyola and Victor Gonçalves will join the Alfaia Association and Verão Azul in a conversation about the SALARIS project. They will talk about their experience in the artistic occupation of a 45-kilometre-long rock salt mine in Loulé. Each artist will take on a different chamber within the underground complex, inviting visitors on a journey through different artistic explorations of salt, geology and human relationships with the natural and technological environment.
The SALARIS – Fictions from Salt project offers an immersive experience at the Mina de Sal-Gema, in Loulé, Portugal. Spanning 45 kilometres, the underground space will host installations by artists Maura Grimaldi, Natália Loyola and Victor Gonçalves, individually dealing with salt, geology and the relationship between humans and the environment. Using analogue practices, Grimaldi will create a cinematic atmosphere, delving into the galleries to question the slow process of transformation. Loyola will transform the tactile texture of the mine into immersive sound experiences, searching for the threshold between artificial and natural. Gonçalves will present two installations: one with paper boats, based on a report about an environmental crime in a rock salt mine in Brazil, and another exploring the dilation of time and the fragility of matter. Together, these installations create a sensory and thought-provoking dialogue to explore the complex interactions between humans, technology and nature.
Maura Grimaldi (São Paulo, Brasil) works somewhere between academic research and artistic practice, exploring mainly lost technologic formats and experimenting with optic devices. Her work delves on the economy of attention and contemporary subjectivity. She lives and works in Lisbon and has participated in exhibitions such as Saxa loquuntur (as pedras falam) (2024), and was also a grantee of Fundação La Caixa (2022/2024). Her projects include residencies and exhibitions in several contexts, such as the grant Pro Helvetia/COINCIDENCIA South America, and the PIMASP programme at MASP.
Natália Loyola (Campinas, Brazil, 1981) is a Lisbon-based visual artist and researcher. She focuses in creating installations combining geology and technology, questioning the narratives of the Capitalocene and the relationships between language and the mineral world. She graduated in Media and has a masters in Anthropology – Visual Cultures. Loyola participated in the XXIII Bienal de Arte de Cerveira (2024), getting the Prémio Aquisição by Vila Nova de Cerveira City Hall. In 2024 she had her solo exhibition A pele da terra (The Skin of the Earth) in Lisbon, curated by Sofia Steinvorth.
Victor Gonçalves (Brazil, 1989) is a visual artist, Lisbon-based since 2017. His research on expanded design, by means of objects, machines and installations, discusses the human relations in the production of space and criticises utilitarianism in artistic speech. Graduated in Geography and Art History, Gonçalves has participated in exhibitions such as Por um Fio (2021), XXII Bienal de Cerveira (2022), and Nos_ in Madrid (2024). He is financed by DGartes for projets such as Salaris, with Maura Grimaldi and Natália Loyola, and he is a founder of the Atelier B12 association.
