Ana Vieira (Coimbra, 1940—2016, Lisbon) is one of the most relevant Portuguese artists from the period spanning the 1960s to today. The Serralves Collection includes works from the artist in various media — objects, installation, photography, print —, reflecting the diversity of her practice and the pioneering character of her critique of the central place accorded to traditional genres — painting and sculpture — in art. This exhibition, organized almost twenty years after Ana Vieira’s retrospective at the Serralves Villa, allows for a revaluation of the artist’s historic role and for an understanding of the surprising relevance of her work. It also marks the artist’s return to an architectural and museological context which underlines the permeability between domestic and public space, between interiority and exteriority, which has always characterized Vieira’s artistic language. As in 1999, the year they were first shown here, the objects and installations in Through the… still question all the notions and stereotypes around the role of the home, and the relationship between women and home.

Through the... is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Marta Almeida, deputy director of the Museum, and Ricardo Nicolau, deputy to the director.