– 02.02.2025
My pleasure is an exhibition of large-scale oil paintings, with canvases measuring three and a half by two metres. This is Joana Villaverde’s first work without any figurative or iconographic expression. It is as if they were just backgrounds, with no one, neither an eye nor a gaze, animal or human. This work is a portrait of the privilege of being able to work in freedom.
Joana Villaverde (Lisbon, 1970) lives and works in Avis. She has exhibited regularly in Portugal and abroad since 1998. The recipient of a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the Location One residency in New York, she was also resident artist at the Qattan Foundation Guest House in Ramallah. She has published Emma (Cavalo de Ferro, 2003) and Animals Nightmare (Edições Documenta, 2017). In 2016 she developed the project Mar, with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Bensaúde Group. In 2018 she opened her Officina Mundi studio in Avis, where she is responsible for public programming. Joana Villaverde is represented in the Contemporary Art Collection of the Portuguese State, the EDP Foundation, the Carmona e Costa Foundation, the Foundation for Luso-American Development, the CESAR Collection, quARTel – Fernando Ribeiro Collection, the Municipality of Almada, the Diocese of Beja, and several private collections in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Palestine, and the United States.
– 02.02.2025