Filipa Oliveira, Born in Lisbon in 1974, has been working as an independent curator and critic there since 2002. She has curated many solo and group in collaboration with institutions such as Tate Modern, Kettle’s Yard, John Hansards Gallery, Mead Gallery and Frieze Projects (all in the UK), Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian and Crac Alsace (France), Kunstverein Springhornhof (Germany) and many others.
Among many other distinguished positions, in 2009/10 she was guest curator of the Portuguese Wave exhibition series at Threshold Artspace, Scotland and in 2012 at the Satellite Project at Jeu de Paume, Paris where she curated the solo shows of Jimmy Robert, Tamar Guimarães, Rosa Barba and Filipa César. She also served as the curatorial assistant of the 28th São Paulo Biennial. A prolific writer, she currently writes for Artforum, and serves on a number of distinguished curatorial committees and juries.
Filipa Oliveira stayed at the JCVA for an intensive working week during November, 2014. She met with a number of curators and directors of art institutions, as well as with local artists and another JCVA visitor, Hamza Halloubi, who arrived before she left. The highlight of her visit was the virtual exhibition she curated for her talk before art students in the Theory of the Arts & Master in Policy and the MFA program at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Hansen House. The starting point of her extraordindary talk was Bruno Latour’s seminal book "We Have Never Been Modern" (1991); avoiding the traditional lecture format, Oliveira took her audience on a "tour" of a fictional exhibition, comprising European artists whose work deconstructs the notion of modernism.
Oliveira was deeply impressed with the richness and productivity of the local art scene, and said: "I returned with my head full of amazing things and many ideas, completely invigorated."