INÊS ZENHA: MURKY WATERS

Curated by: João Mourão and Luís Silva

Murky Waters is Inês Zenha’s (Lisbon, 1995) first institutional solo show in Spain, a project specially curated for the second floor of the CA2M Museum. Inês Zenha’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses installation, painting, sculpture and ceramics, which they use to explore issues like queer identity, desire and vulnerability. Through their work, Zenha questions social mores, particularly those rooted in heteropatriarchal structures, to offer a poetic, critical reflection on the body’s fluidity and resilience. Their recent projects explore the intersections between power, transformation and the creation of new ontologies for marginal identities.

Murky Waters expands on this exploration by offering a moving meditation on the diffuse social and spatial negotiations that the queer body has to navigate. The works in this exhibition emerge from complex relationships between the body—perceived as both holy and profane—and water, along with bodily fluids. Here, liquids become powerful metaphors symbolising the urgency to dissolve divisions and dismantle discrimination by transforming these spaces into acts of love.

The exhibition embraces ‘turning liquid’, a flowing body that, uncontainable, is fragmented to realise itself, countering power systems with poetry where they seek to dominate with violence. Murky Waters resists notions of purity by creating a space for what the hygienic imagination aims to suppress: the monstrous, the animal, the dark, the foreign, the feminine and the queer.

Through an underground journey—which goes through bodies, reservoirs, drainage systems and water leaks—the exhibition invites us to feel the digestive and respiratory rhythms of the water within us. In an act of visceral affirmation, Zenha leads us underground, to the throat, revealing the monster that speaks, the monster that feels.

The first monographic volume devoted to Inês Zenha will be launched along with the exhibition. It includes commissioned essays by Evan Moffitt and Juf (Bea Ortega Botas and Leto Ybarra), as well as a conversation between the artist, João Mourão and Luís Silva, the editors of the publication and curators of the exhibition. Designed by Márcia Novais, the volume is co-published by the CA2M Museum and Caniche Editorial.

INÊS ZENHA

They were born in Lisbon in 1995 and live between Paris and Lisbon. They have a bachelor’s in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins, London, and have done residencies at La Folie, Barbizon; Atelier 11, Paris; and La Junqueira, Lisbon. Their solo exhibitions include Everything That Has Been Swallowed Must Return, Galería Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca, 2023; Ressurreição, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, 2022; and Impenetrable, Double V Gallery, Marseille, 2018. Their recent group shows include The Collection Dialogues Volume 3: The Rain Does Not Come From the Sky, Collegium, Arévalo; Lettera d’amore, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon; Inteligencia Líquida, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Letter to a Friend – March’Art Projects, Paris; Ceremonia de Apertura de la Temporada Portugal-Francia, Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris; and Atelier 11, París. Their works are part of the National Contemporary Art Collection of Portugal, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, the Mercedes Villardel Collection and many others.

JOÃO MOURÃO AND LUÍS SILVA

João Mourão and Luís Silva have been working as a curatorial duo since 2009. They are the co-directors of Kunsthalle Lissabon, which they founded that same year. They were the curators of the Portugal Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) with Vampires in Space by Isadora Neves Marques. A selection of recent curated projects includes solo exhibitions of Mounira Al Solh (Museo Serralves, Oporto), Jonathas de Andrade (CRAC Alsacia, Altkirch, France and MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal), Manuel Solano (Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil), Pedro Barateiro (Fundación Carmona e Costa, Lisbon, Portugal), Eduardo Batarda (Fundación Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva, Lisbon, Portugal) and Carla Filipe (MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal). As co-directors of Kunsthalle Lissabon, they have presented solo exhibitions of artists like Teresa Solar, La Chola Poblete, Sara Sadik, Gabriel Chaile, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Ad Minoliti, Zheng Bo, Laure Prouvost, Caroline Mesquita, Sol Calero, Bruno Zhu and many others. In addition to their curatorial practice, João Mourão and Luís Silva regularly contribute to different publications and have edited several monographs. They were the curators of Zona Maco Sur (2015–2017), the individual project section at the Contemporary Art Fair of Mexico City, and Artissima Disegni (2017–2019), the contemporary art fair in Turin, Italy.