“Parto e Permanência” asserts itself as a space of encounter between the intimate and the political, grounded in the conviction that what has so often been confined to the private sphere — the body, motherhood, family, memory and language — is, in fact, a profoundly collective territory, shaped by power relations, cultural inheritances and gestures of resistance. Bringing together the practices of Bárbara Fonte, Estefânia r., Luísa Sequeira and Virgínia de Diego, this exhibition proposes a reflection on forms of existence, transmission and transformation inscribed within female experience.

It is no coincidence that the exhibition brings together women who, in different ways, evoke the figure of the pioneers, the women in labour, the mothers-bodies-that-bear, sustain, transmit and endure. More than a place of origin, birth emerges here as a metaphor for creation and continuity.

Bárbara Fonte alludes to the symbolic construction of the feminine figure within the Portuguese context, articulating religious and cultural references that have historically shaped gender roles.

Luísa Sequeira develops a transdisciplinary practice in which archive, collage and moving image reconstruct feminist narratives that challenge dominant power structures.

Estefânia r. explores resistance as an embodied gesture, interrogating physical, social and symbolic limits through acts of rupture and affirmation.

Virgínia de Diego works with form through accumulation, repetition and density, constructing compositions that evoke processes of sedimentation, memory and identity.

Together, these artists trace a sensitive cartography in which the intimate ceases to function as a refuge and instead asserts itself as a site of political, historical and collective inscription — a space of birth, permanence and reinvention.

Estefânia r.