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Established in 2010 and consolidated in its present form in 2013, Underdogs works with a diversified roster of Portuguese and international artists connected with the urban inspired contemporary art universe, fostering the development of close relationships between creators, the public, and the city with the aim of promoting art as an everyday experience.
Atelier Contencioso is the work space of four women artists: Ana Velez, Joana Gomes, Maria Sassetti, and Xana Sousa. Founded in 2015, it emerged from the common need to find a viable work space, as well as from the closeness and parallelism that exists between the artists' pictorial production.
The works they have been creating, both as collective art interventions and as group exhibitions, set off from a site-specific line of thought, considering the place with its specificities. However, this idea of "place" as the centre of production does not comprise in its totality the complexity of the work that has been developed. Contributing with four distinct bodies of work, each common project is loaned a multiplicity of concepts and references which, sometimes, also respond to specific commissions.
In its collective production, Atelier Contencioso also explores continuously the notion of impossibility and multiplication. In the Offsite project, the intention was to occupy this temporary exhibition space with works specifically related to the place. Each of the artists presents objects removed or replicated from a real context - off-site -, here installed and elevated to other readings. The process of creation of the works implies, in itself, the repetition of movements, shapes, and media, the idea of excess thus remaining subjacent.
