Vanishing Intimacies. Surrounding Nan Goldin

The exhibition Vanishing Intimacies: Surrounding Nan Goldin brings together 66 works by 36 artists, primarily from the Holma/Ellipse Collection, with additional contributions from the Berardo Collection, Teixeira de Freitas Collection, CACE, and Casa das Histórias, as well as the Galeria Filomena Soares. Showcasing a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography, and video, the exhibition invites the public to view intimacy as a shared and evolving experience.

Vanishing Intimacies presents intimacy as the art of living and narrating life, unfolding through habits, desires, and affections that shape our inner condition through their tensions, imbalances, and inclinations. Departing from notions of identity, the intimacy here is not an act of isolation, but an authentic expression of being, both flexible and open to the surrounding world.

Drawing on Nan Goldin’s work as a starting point, the exhibition explores diverse themes linked to intimacy, from the expressive practices of female artists challenging patriarchal norms to the introspective shifts of late 19th-century art that culminate in the surrealist and psychoanalytic tensions between self and other. Intimacy thus becomes a political act, transforming the private into a collective experience, shaping the shared reality we inhabit.