SNBA - Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes

Rua Barata Salgueiro 36, 1250-044 Lisboa

05 . 11 . 2026 → 05 . 12 . 2026

monday - friday → 12:00 pm – 07:00 pm
saturday → 02:00 pm – 07:00 pm
Closed on Sundays and public holidays.

Artist

paula roush

Liquid Waters

“Some images do not document a place; they persist as surviving organisms of the relations that gave rise to them.” – paula roush

Liquid Memories is a residency-based research project that started in 2021 when curator Francisco Varela invited paula roush to participate his curatorial project, designed to explore the contact zone between water, photography and publishing. The project engages bodies of water as living archives that embody histories, cultures, and ecological transformations.
Liquid Memories began with the situated waters of the Douro River and the Pasteleira reservoir park, in Porto, Portugal. The block of works, called Water Stations, was developed through a workshop with a group of Porto-based artists and photographers. Water samples collected from a local water treatment plant were used to soak photographic collections, activating water’s archival materialities. This process foregrounded water’s role in shaping collective memory while revealing its capacity to transform photographic images and narratives. Images and texts emerge through encounters with water as material force — reflecting, dissolving, and reconfiguring forms of knowing.
The second block of works, Water Stories, was activated through a mass Zoom live editing lab and an open call for further collaborations. This phase extended the project beyond Porto to include waters from Iceland, the Atlantic Ocean, the Azores archipelago, Africa, and Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The project thus opened a distributed dialogue on water across different cultural, geographic, and ecological contexts.
Artists: paula roush, Betina Dal Molin Juglair, Francisco Varela, Miguel Marecos, Joana Nascimento, David Goldenberg, Raul Simões Pinto, NDMALO archive, Alice WR, Teresa Huertas, Carla Fragata, Manuela Matos Monteiro, Luís Carvalhal, Natércia Caneira, João de Goes, Inês R. Amado, Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro, Ana Botelho, Manuela Vaz, Renato Roque, Eliane Velozo and Severino Iaba, Susana Paiva, Mide Plácido
Project and editorial design: paula roush