Gabriela Albergaria

Gabriela Albergaria is a Portuguese artist who lives and works between Brussels and Lisbon

With a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Oporto, she has been awarded numerous scholarships and artistic residencies, such as Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2000/2001) with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) / Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2004) / Villa Arson, Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Nice (2008) / The University of Oxford Botanic Garden, in collaboration with The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford (2009/2010), Winter Workspace, Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, New York (2012), Residency Unlimited, New York, USA (2015), Flora ars+natura, Bogotá, Colombia (2015), Gate 27, Istanbul (2024).

 

Gabriela Albergaria's work involves one territory: nature. The artist summons up themes around cultural, historical and economic relations with nature, in its Western tradition.

In Gabriela Albergaria's works, these relationships have been enunciated and worked on from a reflection on the garden and the landscape (as designed, built and regulated natural spaces) or a reflection on the acclimatisation-displacement of plants that takes us back to extractive and intensive practices, in the broad context of the colonial project (colonisation of nature).

 

More recently, her work has questioned the predation and destruction of ecosystems with a sense of urgency. Poetically re-enacting actions centred on the regeneration, recovery and reuse of used practices, materials and objects, reflecting on the issue of waste.