INTERVIEWS

Fábio Colaço, Artist

Interview by Francisco Lacerda. 23/08/2026

Fábio Colaço (b. 1995, Lisbon) is a contemporary Portuguese visual artist and sculptor based in Lisbon. Trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and Munich’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Colaço centers his practice on sculpture to critically examine the interplay between power, language, and social norms.

By leveraging irony, humor, and subversion as deliberate conceptual strategies, his work destabilizes conventional perception and interrogates how authority and symbolic structures are internalized in contemporary culture.

Winner of the Millennium BCP Foundation Young Art Award (2019) and nominee for the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize (2025), he has exhibited internationally at institutions and events such as the Macao International Art Biennale, MACAM (Lisbon), and MAC Marseille, with his work held in major public and private collections including the Contemporary Art Collection of the Portuguese State (CACE) and Galila's P.O.C. in Belgium.

Francisco Lacerda: How did the idea for the work Dream (to Inês) (2021), which involves a diamond and a balloon, come about? Can you talk about the process of collaboration with Bárbara Bulhão on this project?

Fábio Colaço: The idea emerged from bringing together two elements that carry seemingly opposing meanings: a diamond, associated with permanence, value, rarity, and the imaginary of femininity, and a balloon, a light, ephemeral object inevitably destined to disappear. I was interested in placing these two elements in dialogue, creating a tension between what we understand as enduring and what we know to be transient.

The collaboration with Bárbara Bulhão developed very naturally. Beyond being a couple, we frequently share processes of reflection and discussion around our artistic practices. The work was commissioned by Inês Baptista da Câmara as a gift to mark her thirtieth birthday, and from the outset it was conceived as a kind of symbolic portrait. Although Bárbara and I work through distinct artistic languages, we found common ground in this project, jointly developing both its conceptual and formal dimensions. What particularly interested me was the possibility of representing a person not through their physical image, but through a constellation of symbols and qualities. In this sense, the diamond suspended by a balloon becomes a paradoxical presence: simultaneously precious and vulnerable, heavy and light, stable and unpredictable.

The work therefore acquired a dimension that goes beyond the simple relationship between the objects that compose it. It ultimately functions as a poetic portrait of Inês herself: an open form, in constant movement, surrendered to the chance of wind and space. A feminine symbol released into the open sky, free and dancing, like a narrative without a fixed script, whose trajectory remains forever unwritten.

FL: Your work God Shoes (2024) bears visual similarities to Mirage (2026). Is there a direct relationship or conceptual continuity between the two?

FC:  Yes, there is a direct relationship and a clear conceptual continuity between the two works. Both God Shoes (2024) and Mirage (2026) use shoes as sculptural supports and employ the image of the sky as their central visual element, establishing a reflection on transcendence, belief, and the relationship between the human and that which lies beyond immediate experience.

In Mirage (2026), the sky appears as an image of desire and projection, functioning as a promise of freedom, ascension, or fulfilment that never truly materialises. The title itself refers to this condition: a mirage is a visual phenomenon that appears to offer something tangible, yet dissolves as we attempt to reach it. Both works therefore belong to the same line of inquiry into the symbolic construction of reality, belief, and the way certain images acquire an almost mythical dimension. I am interested in understanding how certain symbols continue to generate hope, faith, or expectation even when their fulfilment proves impossible or perpetually deferred.

In this respect, the works resonate with Hannah Arendt’s idea that truth is “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.” However, in these works that relationship is deliberately inverted. The sky ceases to be a stable point of reference and becomes a territory of uncertainty, projection, and illusion, while the act of walking itself comes to rest upon an image that no longer guarantees truth.

The God Shoes series (2017–2026) began in 2017, in a context marked by the election of Donald Trump and the growing dissemination of the concept of post-truth in public debate. The first work in the series emerged precisely from an unease with a historical moment in which facts seemed to lose their capacity to structure consensus and the distinction between reality, belief, and fiction became increasingly blurred. Mirage extends this investigation, demonstrating how this condition not only remains relevant but has become a structural characteristic of the present.

FL: Works such as Bread to the People (2026), Post-Europe (2025), and Untitled (bread) (2021) carry a strong political and economic charge. What drives you to address these themes? Was there a particular trigger or personal experience that led you to focus your research on these topics?

FC: Rather than commenting on specific events, I am interested in analysing the systems of power that shape contemporary life. I live in the present, I think about what surrounds me—it is impossible not to. Politics, economics, and language are structures that profoundly influence the way we think, communicate, and make decisions, often without us even realising it.

There was no single event that triggered this interest. It is instead the result of an accumulation of observations about how certain narratives become dominant and come to be accepted as natural or inevitable. In this sense, I identify with Michel Foucault’s reflections on the way discourse produces truth and organises relations of power. I am interested in understanding how certain ideas cease to be mere opinions and become normative structures that shape behaviour and ways of living. I also find affinities with authors such as Byung-Chul Han, particularly when he describes contemporary forms of control that no longer depend solely on repression but on seduction, productivity, and self-exploitation. Many of my works seek precisely to make these mechanisms visible.

In Bread to the People (2026), for example, I am interested in exploring the distance between political promise and the material experience of everyday life. There is a close relationship with Lauren Berlant’s notion of “ordinary crisis,” according to which crisis has ceased to be an exceptional event and has become a permanent condition of contemporary existence. The contrast between bread, a symbol of basic necessity, and the red carpet, associated with power and privilege, seeks to materialise precisely this tension between expectation and reality, between discourse and concrete conditions.

It is also interesting to consider the ancient Roman concept of “bread and circuses,” through which rulers provided food and entertainment to keep citizens occupied and politically passive. The persistence of this idea across centuries reveals its remarkable timelessness, something that becomes particularly evident in the presence of this work.

FL: Money, power, and greed are recurring themes in your work. Is there a personal reason that led you to develop a body of work focused on the financial system and the critique of consumer society?

FC: Money interests me primarily as a symbolic construction. It is an extraordinary object because its value does not reside in its materiality, but in the collective belief we place in it. In that sense, it closely resembles other abstract structures such as religion, ideology, or political power.

Much of my work stems from precisely this observation: how do certain collective fictions acquire very real consequences in people’s lives? How do seemingly neutral symbols come to organise behaviours, desires, and social relationships? I do not see my work as a moralistic critique of money or consumption. What interests me is understanding the mechanisms through which value is produced and revealing the paradoxes between what we believe and what actually takes place.

In this context, I find affinities both with Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the fragility of the structures that sustain the common world and with Mark Fisher’s analysis of contemporary capitalism, which highlights the growing difficulty of imagining alternatives to existing economic systems. Many of my works emerge precisely from this space of tension between what appears inevitable and what can still be questioned.

FL: In works such as Utopia (2024) and Untitled (world if there was no land) (2023), you seem to question the idea of geographical and social boundaries. In your view, should the world be free from borders and national identities? How do you translate this reflection into artistic objects?

FC: I do not seek to present political solutions or advocate specific models of social organisation. What interests me is questioning what we usually take for granted.

Borders, territories, and national identities are historical and cultural constructions. Although they play important roles in organising societies, they also produce exclusions, inequalities, and conflicts. Art allows us to create spaces of imagination where these structures can be suspended or reconsidered. In works such as Utopia (2024) and Untitled (world if there was no land) (2023), I seek precisely to construct alternative images that allow us to look at the world from another perspective.

I feel close to Marina Garcés’ reflections on the need to reopen the horizon of possibility. In a context marked by the feeling that the future has been exhausted and that there are no alternatives to the structures we have inherited, I am interested in creating images and situations that introduce doubt, displacement, and critical imagination. My works do not offer solutions or political programmes; rather, they seek to reveal the cracks within what we take to be inevitable. They function as exercises in critical imagination, opening possibilities for reflection on belonging, territory, and identity.

FL: How do you analyse the influence of the media on contemporary society, and how does this constant surveillance shape your work?

FC: Contemporary media are no longer merely instruments for transmitting information. Today they actively participate in the construction of social reality. Through repetition, selection, and amplification, they influence the way we perceive the world.

At the same time, we live in a culture marked by permanent exposure. We are simultaneously observers and observed. We produce images of ourselves, consume images of others, and constantly participate in systems of monitoring and surveillance. Michel Foucault’s reflections on surveillance remain particularly relevant, but I am equally interested in how surveillance has transformed in recent decades. We are no longer simply confronted with an external gaze watching us; we voluntarily participate in systems of permanent exposure. In this regard, Byung-Chul Han’s analyses of transparency, control, and self-exploitation provide valuable tools for understanding many contemporary phenomena.

Works such as Untitled (he is watching you) (2020) and Untitled (1984) (2024) emerge from this reflection on visibility, control, and the circulation of images. I am interested in understanding how our perception is conditioned by what we see and, above all, by what we are shown.

FL: Which artists or movements most motivated you to become an artist? Is there anyone in particular who inspires works such as Untitled (Concetto Spaziale) (2024) or Dark Cloud (2021)?

FC: My references are highly diverse and span very different historical periods. I am interested both in the tradition of classical sculpture and in the conceptual strategies of contemporary art.

Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Joseph Beuys, Piero Manzoni, Cildo Meireles, and Maurizio Cattelan were particularly important in helping me understand how art can transform seemingly ordinary objects into critical and poetic devices.

In the specific case of works such as Untitled (Concetto Spaziale) (2024), there is naturally a dialogue with Lucio Fontana, not as a direct quotation but as a reflection on the symbolic value of money and the mechanisms that legitimise certain objects.

More than formal influences, I am interested in artists capable of producing conceptual displacements, altering the way we look at familiar objects, images, or ideas. That ability to generate new readings of reality remains one of the qualities I most admire in art.

FL: How do you envision the future of art in a world shaped by themes such as darkness, surveillance, and the warnings that seem to echo in works like Untitled (dark) (2020), Untitled (he is watching you) (2020), or Disclaimers (2020)?

FC: I believe art will continue to play a fundamental role as a space for critical thought and imagination. In a context marked by technological acceleration, information overload, and the growing automation of decision-making processes, the ability to create ambiguity, doubt, and multiple interpretations becomes even more relevant.

I do not see art as a tool for providing answers, but as a place where questions can remain open. Perhaps this is precisely its most important function: to create moments of suspension that allow us to critically observe the world we inhabit and imagine alternatives for the future.

In this respect, I identify with Marina Garcés’ idea that lucidity does not consist in predicting the future, but in understanding the present more clearly. Art has the capacity to reveal zones of shadow, contradiction, and fragility that often remain invisible within dominant narratives.

Rather than announcing either apocalyptic or optimistic scenarios, I believe art will continue to be a space of resistance to simplification. A place where the complexity of the world can remain alive and where it is still possible to imagine what appears impossible.

BY GOOGLE ADSENSE