MAU-SNBA announces names selected for the 3rd edition of Artistic Residencies

The MAU – Taguspark Urban Art Museum and the SNBA – National Society of Fine Arts announce the six artists selected for the 3rd edition of the MAU-SNBA Artistic Residencies, which begin in September and run until December 2025.

With proposals that combine innovation, memory, everyday life, and cultural identity, the selected artists— Ana Franco Neto, Camila Almeida, Leonor Cunha Mendes, Miguel Silva (Dassilva), Pedro Matos, and Somayeh Gholani —will experience the creative and disruptive environment that defines Taguspark—City of Knowledge.

The artists and their projects:

• Ana Franco Neto – Builds a fictional universe where a non-human entity observes the world. Inspired by indecipherable documents, invented languages, and speculative universes, she will focus on painting, combining contemplation and the technological environment.
• Camila Almeida – Explores the seed as a metaphor to investigate how contexts shape creative choices and processes. At the intersection between the rural studio and the urban-technological Taguspark, she proposes a reflection on art, nature, urbanity, and creative adaptation.
• Leonor Cunha Mendes – Works with painting, drawing, and engraving, focusing on memory, in association with dreams and nostalgia, in compositions that suspend time. Her works evoke fragments of personal and collective experiences, situated between the real and the imagined.
• Miguel Silva (Dassilva) – Multidisciplinary visual artist reconstructs and reorganizes personal, historical, or cultural images using collage and recombination techniques. He is interested in dissolving boundaries between visual languages, merging street and studio aesthetics without hierarchies.
• Pedro Matos – Graffiti was his first form of artistic expression through tagging, a stylized signature that marks the identity of an urban artist. Graffiti, as a manifestation of protest and rebellion, accompanies his creative journey.
• Somayeh Gholani – Develops the project Mathematics in the Mind, Calligraphy in Form, in a reinterpretation of Arabic-Persian calligraphy into a contemporary language that unites mathematics and cultural memory. She creates sculptural, architectural, and design forms, interconnecting the traditional and the innovative, East and West, in an exploration of geometry, poetry, and the identity of Taguspark.
• Regarding the MAU-SNBA Artistic Residencies, Taguspark CEO Eduardo Baptista Correia emphasizes how they reflect "Taguspark's commitment to innovation, creativity, and entertainment as pillars of a more critical, sensitive, and conscious society."

“The presence of these six new artists reinforces the purpose of MAU – Taguspark Urban Art Museum as a space for experimentation, dialogue, and creative freedom, in the heart of the City of Knowledge,” he adds.

João Paulo Queiroz, president of the National Society of Fine Arts, highlights the success of the first editions of the residencies and emphasizes the importance of these initiatives.

“The Residencies are a unique opportunity for emerging and established artists to develop their work, while bringing the community and Park workers closer to other forms of artistic expression.”

MAU-SNBA Artist Residencies

Lasting four months, the MAU-SNBA Artist Residencies offer individual artists and collectives a space to deepen their artistic practice around themes previously defined in their application. The program is already a benchmark in the calendar of artists and Taguspark, which will soon announce the new editions planned for 2026.