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An approach to Social Sculpture

Madalena Folgado

OPEN CLASS
APRIL 8TH OF 2025, 10AM
AUDITORIUM OF EP1 – ESAD.CR

An Art and Society project entitled AN ATLAS WITH PATHWAYS FOR THE WORLD NOT TO BE CLOSED, with artistic direction by Madalena Folgado, is presented as an example that investigates a social dimension, understood as social sculpture, a term coined by Joseph Beuys. This presentation unfolds the generic term Public Art to discuss strategies for relating to audiences through artistic actions and art objects. Madalena Folgado will present and discuss with students her own way of building relational strategies. AN ATLAS WITH WAYS FOR THE WORLD NOT TO BE CLOSED is a project funded by DGARTES.

Madalena Folgado (1980) holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of the Lusíada University of Lisbon, and is a researcher at CITAD, LIDA and the Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão Research Centre. Since 2014, her phenomenological research approach has led her to organically move towards contexts that can host hybrid, constellar or anachronistic processualities with emerging performative potential. In this sense, she was part of the collective Os Espacialistas, with work situated between architecture and contemporary art and education, until 2019, in particular the Loja do Espacialista project at the CCB, as part of the documentary series Atelier d’Arquitetura, shown on RTP2 (2018) and co-direction with Tadashi Kawamata of the workshop aimed at artists and architects, for the creation of the piece ‘Overflow’ at MAAT (2018). In the same collective, she has collaboratively developed several residencies and co-creative artistic workshops. She is currently the architecture editor of ARTECAPITAL, whose editorial project is centred on opening up architecture to disciplinary crossovers, through inhabiting as a synonym for Being, thus promoting a return to understanding architecture as a collective project with an (Est)ethical destination. She has regularly published essays, collaborated on books and artists’ catalogues, including “Vicente o mito em Lisboa” (2019) or “Quatro Paredes de Água (2021) – César Barrio”, and has curated independently as a hybrid practice and to create fields of connection, namely Caixa Negra (2020); Maria Mendonça – curation and images tessellation (2021- 2023). She has also presented several communications and lectures showing the happening of constellations – as figurative events of Being. She is co-author with Maria Mendonça of the assemblage artist’s book TESSITURA (2023). She has published around 60 texts. She is currently developing the project UM ATLAS COM CAMINHOS PARA QUE O MUNDO NÃO SE FECHE, supported by DG Artes.