OPEN | June 5 – June 22, 2025 HOURS | Wed-Sun, 4:00 PM - 8:00 PM
GUIDED TOUR WITH LGP INTERPRETER | June 21 at 10:30 AM
CHILDREN'S WORKSHOP | June 22 at 10:30 AM
SUPPORT | República Portuguesa – Cultura / Direção-Geral das Artes

Zaratan is pleased to present Bestiário Subterrâneo by Filipa Almeida, a multimedia installation that proposes a sensitive excavation into the interior — a symbolic dive into the subterranean realm of the body and memory. Inspired by the image of a fragile, rickety hand that wishes to become a wing, the work invites us to listen to the invisible rhythm that pulses beneath the surface: the creatures that inhabit us, the stones that observe us, the trodden poetry that can be reborn. Through gestures of approximation and transformation, between resistance and transparency, this creation is an exercise in which the process of poetic and vital excavation turns what is fragile into something precious.

Bestiário Subterrâneo by Filipa Almeida is the third episode of SUBSTRATO, a new exhibition cycle at Zaratan that aims to stimulate artistic productions conceived specifically for a particular space within Zaratan, namely for the micro amphitheater located in the gallery's black box. This concave structure becomes the central axis of the project. The engagement with the space, the environment, and the architecture is an essential element of the presented works, which can be properly defined as site-specific.

BIOGRAPHY: FILIPA ALMEIDA (1996) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and independent curator. She holds a degree in Culture and Communication Sciences from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon (FLUL), completed a Post-Graduation in Art Curation at Nova University (FCSH), and a course in Aesthetics and Art History at the National Society of Fine Arts. In 2023, she finished her Master's in Contemporary Typographic and Editorial Practices at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL), with the dissertation Avoid Static Structures — the artist's book as an independent and expanded object. She regularly writes for Artecapital, where she publishes essays and critical texts on contemporary art and performing arts. She also works as a model for drawing and anatomical drawing classes at FBAUL, a practice that encourages her to deepen her own research into living in a world where we are seeing and visible beings. In 2023, she was one of the artists selected for the FLAD Visual Arts Course in Loulé, culminating in her participation in the exhibition Onde vai o pião vai o ferrão. Notable exhibitions include Algo se mexeu (Útero, 2022), where she launched three artist books, and Toshiba Dreams (ZDB, 2023). She is interested in revealing the millimetric dance of the world and matter and wishes to continue working and exploring possibilities in the worlds of curating, publishing, and the visual arts, believing that these disciplines are multiple, unfolding and expanding mutually, united in a continuous tension/extension.