– 02.11.2025
The FAS Collection is thrilled to announce the exhibition From the surrounds, we build the present curated by Cindy Sissokho and in collaboration with Galerias Municipais/EGEAC at Galeria do Torreão Nascente da Cordoaria Nacional.
The exhibition explores everyday realities and moments of freedom that people generate within the environments they inhabit. Thinking from the concept of the surrounds by scholar and urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone, the exhibition focuses on what he refers to as the spaces in an ongoing process of reconstruction, preservation, fugitivity and transformation by their inhabitants, whether human or non-human.
Here, the notion of the surrounds also invokes myth as a force of fiction, imagination and ingenious refusals. These refusals take spatial and aesthetic form, enabling the re-narration of histories and the exposure of their visible and invisible infrastructures.
These stories are an homage to the “collective lives of continuous remaking” as a possibility to inhabit our environments with the liberating agency to socialise, to improvise and to thrive. Through raw materials, textures, patterns, imagery, and archives as critical forms, the artists depict moments that oscillates between resistance and existence, tension and joy, acting as a driving force to continue thriving in and with the present.
Founded in 2016, Forward Art Stories is driven and strengthened by the ideas behind the diverse narratives and artistic expressions of the African continent and its diaspora. To promote new readings of the collection, FAS invited Cindy Sissokho to collaborate in its programme by curating a group exhibition exploring themes in the collection.
About the collection //
FAS – Forward Art Stories is a private collection based between Lisbon and Luanda. Founded in 2016, FAS is driven and strengthened by the ideas behind the diverse narratives and artistic expressions of the African continent and its diaspora. To promote new readings of the collection, FAS invites and supports artists, curators, writers, and critics to collaborate in its programme. Through partnerships and projects, our ambition is to disseminate, circulate and discuss the works from the collection. FAS currently operates an office in Lisbon and, in 2025, launched the FAS Project Space — a cultural hub located in the heart of Luanda, Angola. This space is mainly dedicated to fostering dialogue, promoting cultural exchange, and nurturing artistic experimentation across disciplines within the local communities.
FAS supports the recognition of artists as a member of the Delfina Foundation Network of Africa Patrons as well as through the donation of works to institutions such as TATE and the Centre Pompidou. Other initiatives over the recent years include collaborations with Sharjah Biennial, Hangar – Center for Artistic Research, Gasworks, La Biennale de Venezia, La Biennale de Lubumbashi, PhotoEspaña, and Kadist. In 2024, FAS became a member of the World Art Foundations organization. The collection is associated with recent publications and editions such as Opera to a Black Venus by Grada Kilomba published by Baden Baden, Breadcrumbs of History – Selected works from the FAS Collection and Atlantica by Hangar Books, envisioning the expansion of the canon of Western culture.
www.fas-collection.com | @forward_art_stories | contact@fas-collection.com
About the Curator
Cindy Sissokho (b. France) is a curator, cultural producer, art consultant, and writer with a focus on anticolonial, social and political practices within the arts, and culture.
Her curatorial work is nurtured by the urgency to broaden and disseminate knowledge and artistic production from systemically racialised and marginalised perspectives. She currently works as a Curator at the Wellcome Collection in London where she recently curated the major exhibition Hard Graft: Work, Health & Rights. She was the co-Curator of the French Pavilion by artist Julien Creuzet, with Céline Kopp for the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2024. She previously worked as a Curator at the New Art Exchange and in the Exhibitions & Public Programmes team at Nottingham Contemporary.
www.cindysissokho.com | @cindysissokho
– 02.11.2025