Cisco Merel’s ‘La Chantin’ at Kunsthalle Lissabon

Cisco Merel’s exhibition ‘La Chantin’ at Kunsthalle Lissabon (18 March–30 May 2026) reimagines the house as a living archive of migration, memory, and survival. Drawing on Afro-Antillean architectural histories linked to the Panama Canal, Merel presents mobile structures on wheels, vernacular references, and fragments of personal and cultural memory. The exhibition proposes architecture as fluid and relational, shaped by movement and collective experience. Merel uses materials like clay, wood, and coconut, and incorporates small Chinese porcelain figures and a window revealing an image of the sea. The work explores home as an ongoing practice of adaptation rather than a fixed destination. Curated by Ana Laguna, the show transforms the gallery into an open system where viewer presence alters the work. Merel emphasizes that the house is not a place but a practice, reflecting on displacement and survival.