
Lisbon, Portugal, 3 June 2025
Artist couple Marta Stanisława Sala (Poland) and Cheong Kin Man (Macau) will present their latest works in the exhibition “The Wondersome and Peculiar Voyages of Cheong Kin Man, Marta Stanisława Sala and Deborah Uhde” (As Espantosas e Curiosas Viagens de Cheong Kin Man, Marta Stanisława Sala e Deborah Uhde), on view at the Macau Museum of the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre (CCCM) in Lisbon, from 5 June to 6 July 2025. The Boym Institute is the patron of the event
Known for combining textile, video, and linguistic experimentation, the duo invites the public on a journey through parallel worlds and personal archives in three multimedia projects: “The Compass of Utopia”, “Apocalypses”, and a new experimental video project on the Macanese diaspora.
“The Compass of Utopia”, partially developed with the support of the City of Kraków and Fundação Oriente, is a bamboo and textile installation composed of 13 fabric compositions that materialise cultural exchange and mutual learning. Inspirations include the Jesuit Michael Boym’s “Flora Sinensis” (1656), the musicality of Cantonese poetry translated into colour forms, and autoethnographic elements drawn from Macanese family migration histories and contemporary travels.
“Apocalypses”, first shown at the Macau Biennale in 2023, blends text, textile, and video in a science fiction narrative. The fabric featured in this fantastical world encodes threads from a Polish family archive, recalling their migration journeys across 20th-century borders – from Vilnius, through the fringes of Mongolia, to contemporary Poland. The piece represented both Poland and Berlin at the biennale.
The exhibition also features an experimental video project based on interviews with the Macanese diaspora. Its narrative travels through Brazil, where the shared human feeling of nostalgia echoes through automatic translations into various languages. Accompanying the video is a new artist book titled “Entre-vista, Między-widzenie. Roz-mowa, Des-locução”. Presented as a flipbook with a Portuguese-Polish glossary, the artistic publication deconstructs a video interview extract, pausing on each spoken word to explore the possibilities and limitations of translation.
At the exhibition opening on 5 June, the artists will lead a guided tour. The following day, on 6 June, the Goethe-Institut Library in Lisbon will host an artist talk and the launch of the expanded edition of “Apocalypses” (720 pages) — a collection of fictional ideograms originally created at the Krakauer Haus in Nuremberg, Kraków City Council’s only cultural mission abroad.
Exhibition Details
Portuguese Title: As Espantosas e Curiosas Viagens de Cheong Kin Man, Marta Stanisława Sala e Deborah Uhde\
English Title: The Wondersome and Peculiar Voyages of Cheong Kin Man, Marta Stanisława Sala and Deborah Uhde
Artists: Cheong Kin Man, Marta Stanisława Sala, Deborah Uhde
Curator: Lorena Tabares Salamanca
Vernissage with guided tour: 5 June 2025, 17:00
Exhibition dates: 6 June – 6 July 2025
Venue:
Macau Museum (Museu de Macau)
Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre (CCCM)
Rua da Junqueira 30, 1300-343 Lisbon
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00–17:30
Accompanying Event
Artist talk and book launch
Date: 6 June 2025, 18:00
Location: Goethe-Institut Library,
Campo dos Mártires da Pátria 37, 1169-016 Lisbon
Support
Honorary Patronage:
Embassy of Poland in Portugal
Embassy of Colombia in Portugal
Financial Support:
Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland (for Marta Sala)
Adam Mickiewicz Institute of Poland (for Marta Sala)
Fundação Oriente of Portugal (for the reedition of the artist book by Cheong Kin Man and Marta Sala)
Partners:
City of Kraków
Goethe-Institut Portugal
Media Patronage:
Krakow.pl
Boym Institute
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