At Lisbon’s Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM), artist Carlos Bunga transforms cardboard, paint, and tape into a monumental meditation on memory and belonging. His new solo exhibition, Inhabit the Contradiction (November 8, 2025 – March 30, 2026), curated by Rui Mateus Amaral, invites visitors to literally walk through the artist’s imagination — a world where architecture, emotion, and history intertwine.
The show begins with a haunting drawing, My First House Was a Woman, 1975 (2018), inspired by Bunga’s mother’s journey from Angola to Portugal during the civil war. From there, the exhibition expands into a sprawling, site-specific installation — a “forest” of cylindrical columns that blur the boundaries between nature and construction, fragility and permanence. Other works, many drawn from CAM’s collection, reflect Bunga’s fascination with transformation and impermanence — including altered domestic furniture in the museum’s lobby that brings the feeling of “home” into a public space.
Throughout, Bunga’s art speaks of resilience. His materials are humble, yet the emotion is grand — evoking shelters, ruins, and the shifting ground of identity itself. On March 14, visitors will have a rare chance to watch Bunga reconfigure his installation live, dismantling and rebuilding it before their eyes.
Born in Porto in 1976 and now based in Barcelona, Carlos Bunga is one of Portugal’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. A graduate of Caldas da Rainha’s School of Art and Design, his work defies category — merging painting, sculpture, and performance into something profoundly human. Inhabit the Contradiction is not just an exhibition; it’s an experience that asks us to consider what it truly means to make, unmake, and inhabit our own histories.
For more information, visit the CAM website.
Carlos Bunga. Inhabit the Contradiction
CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian
Rua Marquês de Fronteira, 2
Lisbon
Hours:
Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday to Friday – 10:00 to 18:00
Saturday 10:00 to 21:00
Closed on Tuesdays
Entrance: €10.00
Photos: ©Pedro Pina courtesy of CAM