Kunsthalle Lissabon Temporarily Cedes Space to Italian Curatorial Collective Cura.

The Italian curatorial project Cura., founded in Rome in 2009 by Andrea Baccin and Ilaria Marotta, has taken over the Kunsthalle Lissabon in Lisbon from May to August 2019. This takeover is part of the Kunsthalle's 10th-anniversary celebration, during which the institution intentionally withdrew from the city's cultural scene to reflect on the challenges of operating a small contemporary art space amid aggressive gentrification and tourism. Cura. is one of four international partners invited to run the venue as a pop-up. The inaugural exhibition, titled "Holy Toledo, Takotsubo!," features the first solo show in Portugal of Canadian-born, London-based artist Athena Papadopoulos (b. 1988). The exhibition includes floating wedding dresses, spectral installations, fused objects, and chrysalis-like environments, accompanied by a sound composition "Funeral For a Friend" (3'46", 2019) created with HP Parmley. Cura. was founded in 2009 as a magazine and publishing house, opened its Rome exhibition space Basement in 2012, and expanded with the project space Kura in Milan's Fonderia Artistica Battaglia in 2018.