Amid the flood of art and culture at the 60th Venice Biennale and the winding streets and canals of the floating city, a garden nestled in a palace seems an idyllic place to pause and reflect. But for the Greenhouse collective – consisting of artist-curators Mónica de Miranda, Sónia Vaz Borges and Vânia Gala – the garden becomes a catalyst for collective action in their novel and challenging contribution to this year’s event, in which they direct the Portugal Pavilion. The trio wanted to explore – as they put it – “connections between practice, theory and pedagogy” and present the exhibition space as a place for experimentation and reflection. They achieve this by developing a “Creole Garden” in Palazzo Franchetti, integrating sculptures, stages, installations and gathering areas, providing space for discourse and discovery while visitors help shape the program and break down the traditional hierarchies between artists, curators and audience.

Greenhouse is comprised of an artist (de Miranda), a researcher (Vaz Borges), and a choreographer (Gala), and their interdisciplinarity is intersectional, as they work in different spaces on different issues. This has enabled a fruitful range of programming in the pavilion, ranging from talks on ecologies of care by activists like Vandana Shiva to workshops/performances on abolition as emancipation in the struggle for land rights. Earlier this summer, STIR spoke with Vaz Borges about the collective’s radical and pluralist hopes for the Portuguese pavilion, which continues to host key speakers and immersive educational workshops throughout the duration of the biennial this fall.

Greenhouse divides its rhizomatic program into four “actions”: Garden, Living Archive, Schools, and Gatherings. The garden is a physical space that commemorates historical deeds of enslaved people who cultivated diverse soils opposed to plantation culture as an act of resistance, subsistence, and gathering. Greenhouse’s lush garden introduces a range of tropical plants cultivated according to permaculture and syntropic principles (which create order), and it sets the stage for pressing and ever-relevant questions around home, diaspora, and exile. This even extends to the indigeneity and transposition of various plants; in planning the garden, the collective intentionally chose plants from across Italy. This also ties into the collective’s goals of mitigating the pavilion’s environmental impact, as they intend to donate the plants and soil to the community after the Biennale ends, extending its lifespan and amplifying the intended social impact of their work.

The garden is surrounded by Monica de Miranda’s sculptures, two of her films (one of which was produced together with Vaz Borges) and a sound installation that transmits excerpts from the magazine. The Tightrope Walkerthat focuses on the politics of space and body. The Living Archive, the Schools and the Assemblies together make up the public program of the pavilion, each with a different approach. The Living Archive includes choreographed performances and installations guided by the variety of sounds emanating from the exhibition’s sound installation. The School, curated by Vaz Borges, proposes a series of provocations through workshops led by Silent speaking To Dragon Dreamspartly with the aim of changing collective and individual behavior. The Assembly hands over the forum to guest artists and intellectuals, from theorist Denise Ferreira da Silva to curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, further decentralizing and decolonizing the pavilion’s intellectual framework and allowing the audience to participate in its collective thinking and work.

Tap the title video to watch the entire conversation.