Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is pleased to collaborate with Nara Roesler for the fourth edition of the summer exhibition at Comporta, Portugal. Throughout July and August, the former rice barn and once cinema Casa da Cultura da Comporta hosts a group show curated by art historian Nancy Dantas featuring works by five contemporary artists from different parts of the globe, whose practices trace pathways through Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. 

Through works by Alberto Pitta (Salvador, Brasil 1961), Efrain Almeida (Boa Viagem, Brasil, 1964), Igshaan Adams (Cape Town, South Africa, 1982), Leonardo Drew (Tallahassee, USA, 1961) and Marina Rheingantz (Araraquara, Brasil, 1983), the curator, herself a scholar working between Johannesburg, Cape Town and Almada, poses a reflection on the paths and knowledge systems that accompany the rice crop, a dietary staple in countless cultures and a common plantation in the fields surrounding Comporta. An ancestral and contemporary summoning, Stirring the Pot, conceived as cooking, disrupting, and celebrating, takes place when work is over and tools are stored away, opening a circle for dance, liberation, and communication across realms and times. While the sculptures of Igshaan Adams and Leonardo Drew embody historical contexts in South Africa and the United States in sculptural objects, the wildlife sculptures of Efrain Almeida and Alberto Pitta’s textile prints reference specific Brazilian cultures and rituals, and Marina Rheingantz’s painting translates an outdoor sensory experience in abstract materiality. 

“Stirring the Pot temporarily transforms the Casa da Cultura, a former rice barn and once cinema, into a staging of scenes and entwinements between the material and the ethereal, the overt and latent, inside and outside, past and present, the historically distant and poetically close”, writes the curator. 

Developed in 2021 by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, the Comporta summer show originated from a desire to establish alternative models and collaborative projects. It has previously featured exhibitions in partnership with kurimanzutto (2023), Clearing and Madragoa (2022), and Galeria Luisa Strina and Sé Galeria (2021). Initially conceived as a response to the pandemic-related restrictions that disrupted the global art calendar, the exhibition has become a permanent fixture. As Comporta has gradually emerged as a cultural  destination, the show has firmly established itself as an annual highlight.