Cultural Project
A cultural project in a law firm
In an era of major social and economic transformations, Abreu Advogados is developing a cultural project, carried out in cooperation and with strategic commitment. In an umbilical connection to the firm’s history and defying all conventions, Abreu Advogados contributes to the consolidation of culture and civic awareness, promoting contemporary artistic expression among a wide audience that daily visits our offices.
Developed in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, a cultural association, this project incorporates some goals that result from Abreu’s policy as a law firm:
- To promote arts to a wider public;
- To promote sensitivity towards contemporary art among employees, clients, partners and the general public;
- To value the artistic creation of young talents;
- Recognise established artistic paths;
- Strengthen the relationship with the community.
Born within the office, this is a continuity programme developed to be presented and renewed every quarter of the year. The coordination of this project seeks to obey two major challenges, on the one hand, to exhibit works of art in places that were not designed for this purpose, seeking new ways to integrate the artistic object; and on the other hand, to use the theme “Nature” to guide the curatorial options, seeking to bring natural elements closer to the corporate experience of a large law firm.
Since 2019, Abreu Advogados has promoted a wide range of exhibitions, guided tours, book presentations and debates, through which dozens of artists have passed and more than 30 works have been exhibited, which integrate the most varied artistic expressions, such as Painting, Drawing, Video, Sculpture, Neon and Photography.
Values
Mission
Institutional excellence;
Cooperation with organisations in the promotion of cultural and educational policies;
Valuing the artist as the creator of a cultural object;
Promotion of the artistic work and of a climate favourable to creativity and innovation.
Stimulate the interest and knowledge of audiences of different origins and ages in art and culture. Promote solutions of a social nature and with an impact on the community, as an integral part of Abreu Advogados’ policy.
Advocacy without art and culture is advocacy without content, without soul, and this Project is an expression of what we are and want to aspire to be: innovators with inspiration.
Manuel Andrade Neves
Partner and co-ordinator of the Cultural Project of Abreu Advogados

The exhibitions are accessible to all those who work in our office and their families, but they also aim to open our society to the community where we are located and to become an agent for promoting art and culture.
Inês Sequeira Mendes
Partner and co-ordinator of the Cultural Project of Abreu Advogados

When I began to define the lines of this project I realised that Abreu Advogados would be a partner that would fit the challenge, as I knew it had to be someone with a privileged location and who had the courage and daring to explore with us an indispensable way of promoting the arts amongst different audiences.
Lourenço Egreja
Artistic Director of Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, partner association of the project

Visits
The exhibitions of this project can be visited by appointment. If you wish to visit, you may send an e-mail to: [email protected]
NOTE: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have been favouring online formats. For this reason, you can visit our exhibitions in virtual format on this page or on our social networks.
Cultural Project
Individual Exhibitions
Jorge Nesbitt
Catarina Leitão
Atelier Portátil
Jorge Santos
Teresa Palma Rodrigues
Zona V

Jorge Nesbitt was born in 1972 and lives and works in Lisbon.
He has been exhibiting his work regularly since 1999 and since then he has participated in several individual and group exhibitions.
His work is part of several important collections, the Carmona e Costa Foundation Collection, the Ar.Co. Lisbon Collection, the Pedro Cabrita Reis Collection, the Joana Vasconcelos Foundation Collection, among others.
Exibition
In this exhibition Jorge Nesbitt presented a set of recent works that focus on the representation of icons traditionally worked by artists over the centuries in the history of art.
The 13 works presented were mostly large-format still lifes in the Renaissance style in which the artist has, throughout his artistic career, been compiling visual elements that refer to the idea of a “Cabinet of Curiosities”, thus generating vertical and horizontal compositions which, through the contrast between the intense colour attributed to the chosen motives and the profoundly black backgrounds, give rise to an effect of unquestionable spatial depth.

Catarina Leitão was born in Stuttgart in 1970.
She is an artist whose work is structured around drawing, sculpture, installation and books. She has individual exhibitions in the Berardo collection and in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. Her awards and residencies include The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, 2009, Center for Book Arts, 2007, Triangle Arts, 2006, Sharpe Foundation, 2004, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, 2003, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2001, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Fundação Luso-Americana, 1997-1999.
Exhibition
Catarina Leitão presented 25 works, including watercolours, drawings, field notebooks and photographs, which integrate a series that the artist has been working on since 2012.
The idea inherent to the exhibition was initiated in 2013 with the work Atelier Portátil, and remains in permanent update. Each object within this Atelier Portátil is in itself a work, whether absolutely constructed by the artist, as is the case of the Escala de Verdes, a roller with a gradient of greens that assists the painter in choosing the necessary tone, or added to the cart for convenience in the task, such as a magnifying glass, a clipboard that is also a lid, or a folding stool.
Get more information about the artist here https://catarinaleitao.net/

Jorge Santos was born in Silves in 1974.
He is a multidisciplinary artist and has presented work in several countries such as the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil. Jorge Santos is represented in several public and private collections such as MAAT and La Petite Escalère. More recently he received a scholarship from Le Petit Escalère in, France.
Get more information about the artist here http://jorgesantos.net/pt/
Exhibition
In an artistic career that includes several individual and group exhibitions, Jorge Santos’ exhibition brings together more than 30 works produced between 2014 and 2018.
The works exhibited at Abreu Advogados’ headquarters represented flowers, foliage or trees, elements often linked to human constructions, and that made evident the relationship between interior and exterior space.

Teresa Palma Rodrigues was born in Lisbon in 1978, where she currently lives and works.
She exhibits regularly since 2000 and has held several individuals exhibitions, mainly while represented by Galeria Pedro Serrenho.
In 2015 she exhibited at Sala do Veado (MUHNAC), “Seguindo a Espera de um Vazio”. She has participated in several collective exhibitions in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Ireland (Link Culturefest, 2012), Brazil and Mozambique. Highlights include his participation in “POVOpeople”, at Museu da Electricidade (2010) and in “Ciclo da Fotografia Portuguesa” (2013), at MuMA (Curitiba, Brazil).
Get more information about the artist here http://teresapalmarodrigues.com/home-inicio/
Exhibition
The exhibition presented Zona V (of Vago), more than 50 works, between drawing and photography, which integrate the result of the artist’s research for her PhD in Painting at the Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa. The exhibition is Teresa Palma Rodrigues’ reflection about an empty terrain that she could observe from her home and atelier. The exhibited works represent fragments of the herbarium that she was building during her visits to that inhospitable and uninhabited terrain.
Get more information about the artist here: http://teresapalmarodrigues.com/home-inicio/
Urbano
As Flores e as Cinzas
Isabel Sabino
Four Seasons
António Faria
Pedro Vaz

Urbano was born on the island of São Miguel, Azores, in 1959 and currently lives and works in Lisbon and the Azores.
He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, between 1995 and 1997 and participated in the Kaleidoscope Program: The Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm and Tavira Print Workshop, in 1998. In 1998-99 he decorated the Chapel of the Hospital do Divino Espírito Santo in Ponta Delgada, Azores. Since 1997 he is represented by Galeria 111, and since 2000 he collaborates with Galeria Fonseca Macedo in Ponta Delgada.
Exhibition
The artist Urbano presented As Flores e as Cinzas, in a set of more than 30 works, made between 1997 and 2019, which according to the artist “reflect a moment of terrible and unacceptable destruction but which is a metaphor not only for my work but also for life itself.”

Isabel Sabino was born in Lisbon in 1955.
Secondary school teacher (1976-1982); teacher of Fine Arts (ESBAL/FBAUL) since 1982, currently full professor. Member of the research centre Cieba (FBAUL), i2ads (FBAUP), ANBA (Academia Nacional de Belas Artes), the National Society of Fine Arts and Cooperative Diferença.
She has exhibited painting, drawing and other artistic projects since 1977 in group shows and individually since 1985, also participating in workshops and artistic residencies. She has also published dozens of texts on painting and visual arts.
Exhibition
Works from several series are presented in this exhibition. Four Seasons, Ela and Dilúvio.
Four Seasons is a series consisting of twelve paintings – “…as if for 12 months, they fulfill the totality of a cycle organized in 4 groups (4 seasons), each one with 3 paintings. In the genesis of the fundamental images there are 4 photographs and 4 movies. In each of these groups of 3 paintings, a photographic image functions as a cliché of the season, giving origin to 3 close versions. The digital manipulation to which the photos are subjected fractures them into two falsely symmetrical halves, as if in negative, reflection or distancing ghost, then leaving freer formal and pictorial occurrences to manifest themselves, to metaphorise the final synthesis”. Another set of works emerges, She, all with female names or heroines from films and which point more towards an elaborate research in the sense of fiction and storytelling that we can find in her written texts. In the series Dilúvio the artist presents a series of pieces that, out of the need to metaphorise personal situations, made real images that disturbed her and that wander through the political and the poetic.

António Faria, artist-designer from Lisbon, exhibits regularly since the 90’s.
With training in Visual Arts (AR.CO), Graphic Design (IADE), his work has been developed mainly in the fields of drawing-painting, design and Illustration, with incursions in sound experimentation.
His work is already doubly recognised at the Art Olympia Award (Tokyo) and he has visited countries such as Spain, Italy, England, Hungary, France. His most recent individual exhibition took place in 2020 – O Desenho. Força que Nasce do Silêncio at the Côa Museum and O Elogio da Melancolia at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the biodiversity gallery of the Museum of Natural History and Science of the U.Porto.
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents works by the artist António Faria.
Already in its seventh exhibition, the programme developed within this scope and focusing on nature as a theme, exhibits a set of works previously exhibited at Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea and at Museu do Côa.

Pedro Vaz, graduated in Painting from Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa (2006). Lives and works in Lisbon.
In 2021, he presented the individual exhibition, “Num único acorde”, at CAB – Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos, Burgos, Spain.
His participations in the following group exhibitions stand out: Loops.Expanded 2021, no MNAC – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Lisboal; LA TORMENTA, 2020, Centro Cultural Teopanzolco, Cuernavaca, Mexico; O Olhar Divergente, 2019, Arquipélago – Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Azores; Depois do choque, os trópicos, 2018, Galeria Luísa Strina, São Paulo, Brazil; Second Nature, 2018, The Kreeger Museum, Washington D.C., United States; Second Nature, 2016, MAAT – Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon.
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by artist Pedro Vaz.
Pedro Vaz, already in his eighth exhibition, the programme dedicated to nature as a theme, presents a set of works that were made specifically for the Abreu Advogados’ head office building.
Cristina Ataíde
Domingos Loureiro
Sofia Leitão
Barbara Wildenboer

Cristina Ataíde was born in Viseu, in 1951. She currently lives in Carnaxide, in the municipality of Oeiras, and works in Lisbon. She graduated in Sculpture from ESBAL, in Lisbon, and attended the Equipment Design Course at ESBAL, also in Lisbon.
She was production director of Sculpture and Design at Madein, Alenquer, from 1987 to 1996, where she worked with Anish Kapoor, Michelangelo Pistolleto, Keit Sonnier, Matt Mullican, among others. She was a guest lecturer at the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon from 1997 to 2012.
She has exhibited regularly since 1984 – large installations and site-specific work occupy an important place in his shows. His work, often done while travelling, transits between sculpture and drawing, as well as photography and video. The concern with nature and its preservation is a constant in her work and research. She is represented by the following galleries: Galeria Belo-Galsterer, Lisbon; Andrea Rehder, Arte Contemporânea, São Paulo, Brazil; Galeria Ybakatu, Curitiba, Brazil; Galeria Quatto, Leiria; Galeria Magda Bellotti, Madrid, Spain.
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a set of works by the artist Cristina Ataíde.
The ninth exhibition of this programme, dedicated to the theme of nature, reveals itself as a journey to the creative universe of the artist, in several media, such as drawing, watercolour, painting, fleeting and sculpture.

Domingos Loureiro is an artist, professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and researcher at the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society. Coordinator of the Painting Section at FBAUP, responsible for several academic publications on landscape, painting and art, he has organized several national and international events on artistic research and practice. He has held numerous exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, being represented in public and private collections in countries such as USA, Spain, Germany, Ireland, England, Japan, France, Belgium, Brazil, among others.
He exhibits regularly since 2001, having received several art awards. Recently, he received the International Art Award of Guarda (2021), and Territórios de Pedro awards (2021).
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by artist Domingos Loureiro.
Already in its tenth exhibition, the programme dedicated to nature as a theme, presents a set of works specially made for this exhibition.

Sofia Leitão , artist, lives and works in Porto.
She graduated in Sculpture in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto in 2005 (FBAUP) and in Drawing in the Art School of Porto (ESAP) in 2000.
Recent exhibitions: Room 22 at the Colégio das Artes in Coimbra; exhibition Beyond the Mirror at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Museum in Lisbon; festival Desemcaminharte-Arte Pública in Alto Minho (2017) at the exhibition Portugal, Portugueses; Museu Afro-Brazil, São Paulo, Brazil (2016); exhibition Da Cartografia do Poder aos Itinerários do Saber, Museu Afro-Brazil, São Paulo, Brazil (2014); exhibition Casa Ocupada, Casa da Cerca-Centro de Arte Contemporânea, Almada, Portugal; exhibition Negras Paixões at Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, Portugal (2011); exhibition Amália, Coração Independente, Museu Berardo, Lisbon and at the Portuguese Pavilion, Hangart7, Salzburg, Austria in 2009.
His work can be found in the public collections of the Manuel de Brito Foundation and the PLMJ Foundation in Lisbon, Figueiredo Ribeiro in Abrantes, MG in Alvito, Ilídio Pinho Foundation in Porto, as well as in private collections in Portugal, Spain, Austria, Belgium and the United States of America.
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by artist Sofia Leitão.
Already in its eleventh exhibition, the programme dedicated to nature as a theme presents a set of works that were made specifically for the headquarters building of Abreu Advogados.

Barbara Wildenboer lives and works in Cape Town.
She is represented by galleries in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. She is also represented in Lisbon and Luanda by THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE Art Gallery.
In 2007 she obtained a master’s in fine art (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The title of her Master’s thesis was Present Absence / Absent Presence, and the research was concerned with aspects of melancholy, loss, and longing as is embodied by the photographic medium. Before that, she completed a BA(Ed) with majors in English literature, Psychology, and Pedagogics at the University of Pretoria in 1996, followed by a Bachelor of Visual Arts from UNISA in 2003. From 2009-2016 she worked as the head of the Photography Department at the Cityvarsity College of Creative Arts, where she lectured Theory & Discourse and History of Photography. In 2011 she was nominated and subsequently selected as one of the top 20 finalists for the Sovereign African Arts Award, for which she received the Public Choice Prize. She was also among the top 20 finalists for the Thamy Mnyele Fine Art Awards (South Africa) in 2021. In addition to that, she has been awarded several international residencies, such as the Unesco-Aschberg residency (Jordan, 2006), the Al Mahatta residency (Palestine, 2009), the Red De Residencias Artisticas Local (Colombia, 2011), the Rimbun Dahan artist residency (Penang, Malaysia, 2013), L’Ateleier Sur Seine (Fontainebleau, France, 2017) and Hannacc (Barcelona, Spain, 2018).
Exhibition
For the twelfth edition of the ongoing exhibition programme dedicated to Nature, Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by the artist Barbara Wildenboer.
Cássio Markowski

The Brazilian artist based in Lisbon works mainly between drawing and painting, as well as exploring video and installation as means of expanding his artistic practice. Cássio Markowski composes conceptual images that explore the poetics of visual language, creating a universe in which the oneiric relationship between human beings, fauna and flora predominates, the latter as re-signification and healing. The artist’s production encompasses a process of documentation on different socio-cultural aspects of Afro-Brazilian history and the African diaspora. This approach is based on a constant search through archives, image databases or old family albums.
Markowski’s visual universe, simultaneously autobiographical and fictional, political and poetic, fuses his own personal memories with collective experiences and traumas.
Concerned with questions of cultural identity and almost lost traditions, Markowski’s work emphasises the tenuous remaining links between past and present, between history and fiction. In this context, the artist has a distinctive approach where the beauty, elegance and delicacy of his compositions intertwine with concerns linked to socio-political tensions and dynamics.
Graduated in Plastic Arts from the Arts Centre of the Santa Catarina State University (Brazil), he also concluded the masters in Research and Creation in Arts and Performing Arts and Sciences from the University of the Basque Country (Spain). After also having lived and worked as a set designer and teacher in the Basque Country and as an illustrator in Poland he is currently working and living in Almada Portugal, where he is represented by the gallery This Is Not a White Cube in Lisbon.
Exhibition
For the twelfth edition of the ongoing program of exhibitions dedicated to nature, Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by the Lisbon-based Brazilian artist, Cassio Markowski.
Get to know other exhibitions
Arte Jovem Abreu Advogados Award
Fábio Colaço
Louise Kanefuku
I wish I was a whale
Fátima Frade Reis
João Pedro Filipe

Fábio Colaço was born in Lisbon in 1995, where he currently lives and works.
I am Sculpture and Performance and Installation at the University of Fine Arts of Lisbon and at ADBK in Munich.
His artistic practice uses different media such as painting, sculpture, photography and video.
Fábio Colaço regularly exhibits his works in Portugal and abroad, individually and in groups, since 2015.
Exhibition
Fábio Colaço winner of the Arte Jovem Award-Competition 2019, promoted by CDAP, presents 9 works for a reflection on the changing perception and value of money, as well as the unprecedented power it has exerted in the human imagination from Antiquity to Contemporary times.

Louise Kanefuku was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1985.
Louise has been working primarily with drawing since 2012, on autobiographical themes such as insomnia and migration. She has held six solo exhibitions, has works in the collection of Margs (Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, BR) and Macrs (Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Rio Grande do Sul, BR). In 2014, she received the Creativity Incentive Award at the 20th Fine Arts Salon of Porto Alegre and, in 2016, the Acquisition Award at the 44th Luiz Sacilotto Contemporary Art Salon (Santo André / BR). In Portugal, she performed the action “Escuto histórias de imigrantes” (2019) at Lote 67, is part of the project Eixo Residências Artísticas with Isabel Costa and Malena Albarracin and was one of the awardees in the Arte Jovem 2020 Award of the Millenium BCP Foundation.
Exhibition
Louise Kanefuku was one of those selected for the Arte Jovem 2020 exhibition.
The works presented in this exhibition belong to a body of work related to the artist’s coming to the city of Porto. In this city “…the displacement of a body that discovered itself, over three years, a little whale, a little migrant. And it is around this central nucleus that it develops: a whale-migrant-me-body”. The series “I wish I was a whale” are drawings that materialise longing, and where the whale appears as the protagonist. The drawing of the whale as a migrant animal, strong and imposing, able to cross oceans like a kind of underwater tank, safe and unshakable.

She took the drawing and painting course at Ar.Co. She finished her individual project in 2017.
Uses drawn lines and colours on paper forming spatial forms. Investigates geometric abstraction and the importance of planes, transparencies, opacities and textures.
Her work has been selected as a finalist in the Millenium BCP Foundation Arte Jovem Award, Lisbon, 2019; Biennale de la Jeune Création Européenne 2019-21; XXI Bienal Internacional de Arte deCerveira, Vila Nova de Cerveira, 2020; and the Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Award, Amarante, 2020. She has also had solo exhibitions in galleries and museums, such as the Museu Nacional do Traje, Lisbon, 2019-2020; Museu da Seda, 2019, or the Museo Geológico, 2018.
She is represented by Galeria Módulo, Centro Difusor de Arte, Lisbon.
Exhibition
The work of Fátima Frade Reis looks for lines of contact between different materials. She works the three-dimensionality on the flat surface of the paper with constitutive elements such as the point, the line, the colour.
With the printmaking and drawing work she develops she intends to experiment with colour and space.

João Pedro Filipe lives and works in Lisbon. With a degree in Photography and Visual Culture from the Faculty of Design, Technology and Communication (IADE), he found in photography the structural basis of his expression, and was the winner of the Abreu Advogados Award at the Millennium BCP Foundation Arte Jovem Award 2021. Because of his interest in thinking and developing the image, he entered the Master in Aesthetics and Artistic Studies, at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
From his will to question the world, arises the need to give body to questions and thoughts whose discussion is avoided or forgotten. Whether they are disturbing social paradigms or personal issues inherent to human fragility, the common struggles fought individually provoke in the author a discomfort and a need for exposure and denunciation. Even though through a simple look, he uses photography as a propitious medium to materialise these same thoughts. Aware of the ephemerality of his work, his intention is not to present solutions, but to raise a discussion and galvanise a thought, in order to touch someone more capable, who may – even if for a brief moment – bring us closer to a better world.
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by artist João Pedro Filipe.
João Pedro Filipe, already in his third exhibition for Abreu Advogados’ Cultural Project, the program is dedicated to the theme “Atentai os Lírios” which takes us back to a parable in which Jesus talks to his disciples about the importance of focusing on the essential – Mt 6, 25-34. It develops in the sense of comparing situations of Nature with the human exercise.
Inês Mendes Leal

Inês Mendes Leal, born in 1997, is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Lisbon. Her installations combine photography, video, sound, sculpture, drawing and found paraphernalia in an exploration of the effect of action on materiality and the material representation of action, fixing on two main questions: How does an external gesture affect an image? Conversely, how can an act be materialized?
Exhibition
Abreu Advogados, in partnership with Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, presents a series of works by artist Inês Mendes Leal.