Madrugada. Jewellery and the Politics of Hope. Part of the 2nd Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial 2024

Artist list

Pio Abad, Nedda Al-Asmar, Artificial Intelligences, José Aurélio, Anna Avits, Yotam Bahat, Pouya Bakhshi, Misja Beyers, David Bielander, Catherine Blackburn, Jonathan Boyd, Helen Britton, Caroline Broadhead, Beatrice Brovia, Victoria Bulgakova, Gonçalo Camboa, Carla Castiajo, Ada Chen, Nicolas Cheng, Lin Cheung, Countercurrent Collective, Paula Crespo, Johanna Dahm, Leonie Damm, Lucie Davis, Paul Derrez, Gemma Draper, Clementine Edwards, Iris Eichenberg, Ana Escobar Saavedra, Geraldine Fenn, Alice Floriano, Fernanda Fragateiro, Lucy Ganley, Corrina Goutos, Benedict Haener, Sophie Hanagarth, Susie Heuberger, Leonor Hipolito, Valerie Hi Ying Ho, Mike Holmes, Damara Inglês, Frances Wadsworth Jones, Lauren Kalman, Kiseno, Luisa Kuschel, Auli Laitinen, Matt Lambert, Lorena Lazard, Naama Levit, Benjamin Lignel, Reka Lorincz, Nanna Melland, Paulo Mendes, Teresa Milheiro, Marilia Maria Mira, Makers Move, Eija Mustonen, Chequita Nahar, Ted Noten, Paula Paour, Filomeno Pereira de Sousa, Ruudt Peters, Beverley Price, Ramon Puig Cuyàs, Daniel Ramos, Masoumeh Rezaeilouyeh, Jimena Rios, Miles Robinson, Joyce J Scott, Pedro Sequeira, Elizabeth Shypertt, Catarina Silva, Diana Silva, Gisbert Stach, Deganit Stern Stocken, Adeela Suleman, Mengyin Sun, Florance Tebbutt, Timothy Information Limited, Frank Tjepkema, Vivi Touloumidi, Timothy Veske-McMahon, Manuel Vilhena, Samantha Vincent, Lisa Walker, Maria Ignacia Walker, Johanna Zellmer, Christoph Zellweger, Felieke van der Leest

Both the poem and the title of this exhibition appeal to that moment of total possibility, of infinite potential that was felt at the dawn of the Revolution. With this inspiration, the focus of this curatorial and educational project is not necessarily to represent or remember the themes of 1974, it is rather to explore this energy, this Madrugada, as a diffractive light that expands to think about the now, while speculating and projecting, anticipating and thus shaping the future.

The objective of this curatorial exercise is to explore jewellery and the act of adorning the body as a political instrument of restructuring, detail, care and activism. The exhibition aims to show the vitality of the political expression of contemporary artistic jewellery, through transgenerational, transdisciplinary and transcultural visions, revealing diverse understandings, in a comprehensive approach to what political jewellery is today. It is pertinent to consider adornment as a political gesture, as reflections of our interconnection with material, conceptual, social, biological and technological structures that can lead us, humans, to reconsider our evolution (and even our revolutions) in ways that are not anthropocentric, which place humankind at the center of everything. Instead, create decentralization strategies that help us understand the world as a jumble of bodies, identities, objects, forces, knowledge, species and events. By confronting and denouncing major gaps in societies, objects, and in particular jewellery, are not passive agents, but actively mediate our experience of the world as a social and political fabric that, being reparative, permeates emerging ideas and contemporary forms of protest.

Madrugada's light is immersive, warm and heterogeneous, it is generous in its paths, it provides and aspires to new forms of entanglements between matter, societies, politics and technologies. Madrugada's curatorial team believes that the approximately 90 artists presented, each in their own way, show us, through their capacity for immense work and attention, unique methodologies, which explore adornment as a means of transformation, of intimacies and political spheres , to dream and foreshadow the revolutions of tomorrow.


Exhibition Design: Nuno Pimenta
Production: MUD
Graphic Design: Studio on Pluto

Place: MUDE Outside at the Palace of the Counts of Calheta
Rua Gen. João de Almeida 10- 54
Next to the Tropical Botanical Garden – Belém