GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is a group exhibition bringing together internationally recognised women artists.

Opening on December 4th until January 30th.

At a time when women’s voices in the arts remain underrepresented, this exhibition is significant because it affirms joy as resistance, collaboration as a source of strength, and artistic presence as a powerful statement of freedom. Here, making art becomes a shared act, one that honours women’s stories, expands possibility, and redefines how we see and experience contemporary creation.

Location|: Estrela 74,
R. Santo António à Estrela 74A, 1350-184 Lisboa

In partnership with Movart gallery and Estrela 74

Contacts: info@thecuratedlisbon.com

My mission is to support the city’s evolving art scene and to create meaningful platforms for artists to be seen and celebrated. With "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", I wanted to dedicate a space to the power and presence of women in contemporary art. My intention was to offer them that stage, a joyful, playful, and supportive environment where connection becomes part of the artistic process.

In Lisbon, a city that thrives on dialogue and cultural energy, this exhibition is an invitation to celebrate female creativity in all its forms: bold, tender, rebellious, curious, and profoundly alive. It is also a reminder of how essential community is in helping art grow, resonate, and reach further.

Thank you for joining us in honoring these artists and the vibrant creative force they represent. I am proud to share this moment with you, and to continue building a Lisbon where women’s artistic voices are amplified, valued, and embraced.

As Georgia O’Keeffe once said:

“There are no limits to what we can create when we allow ourselves to see the world through our own eyes.”

In this space, fun is not frivolous - it’s revolutionary. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun transforms play into power, laughter into language, and creativity into community. When women create together, they feed each other’s energy, stories, and dreams. They invent new worlds where beauty, courage, and curiosity intertwine. Collaboration becomes empowerment; the act of creation becomes celebration.

The works on display reflect a universe where intuition meets memory, matter meets myth, and emotion meets freedom. From the intimate to the political, from the playful to the profound, each artist adds her unique voice to a collective symphony of feminine creation.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is more than an exhibition - it’s a declaration of intent, a softer provocation. It’s a celebration of women who make, laugh, dream, and dare.

Alena Rakova, known as Exantres, is a Lisbon-based artist with a background in Environmental Design from the Moscow Art and Industry Institute. Before dedicating herself fully to painting and music under the alias XNTRS, she worked as a freelance stylist for fashion and commercial productions.

Alena’s practice is rooted in intuition and emotional honesty. She paints without sketches, working directly on large canvases and allowing her inner states to guide the process. Her works, though deeply personal, invite viewers to experience their own interpretations—there is no right or wrong, only individual reflection.

Sophia Brenninkmeyer is an artist, based in Lisbon, Portugal. She specialises in the traditional techniques of marbled paper. Her work has been exhibited at Bryon Studio in Santos, and she has collaborated on a capsule collection with the lighting designer Violaine d'Harcourt.

Before moving to Lisbon, she worked in the traditional art market at Simon C. Dickinson Limited in London and New York as a Sales Associate and Specialist in Impressionist and Modern Art.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History, Criticism, and Conservation, with a focus on Theology, from Georgetown University.

Mariana Horgan (b. 1985, Lisbon) is a Portuguese artist whose practice spans abstract painting, sculpture, and monotype. Working across large canvases and works on paper, she builds layered surfaces using acrylic, powdered pigment, and washes, often integrating ash, soil, graphite, charcoal, and fabric fragments. Her muted palette, occasionally punctuated by vivid color, reflects a tension between gesture and restraint, control and improvisation.

Horgan studied at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual in Lisbon and completed Painting and Relief Printing studies at the Art Academy in London. Rooted in the lineage of Abstract Expressionism, her work channels its emotional immediacy while maintaining a contemplative, memory-infused sensibility, evoking the quiet resonance of artists like Cy Twombly.

Maria José Cabral is a contemporary artist based in Lisbon, Portugal, known for her vibrant, layered paintings on canvas and paper. Her work explores the dynamic interplay between imagination and reality, drawing on themes of memory, dreams, and the liminal space between the conscious and unconscious.

Working primarily with acrylics, Maria José’s visual language is defined by bold, expansive color and fluid forms that merge into immersive, dreamlike compositions. Each work captures a fleeting emotional moment—an echo of lived experience transformed through color and movement.

Teresa Supico is a Lisbon-based visual artist whose practice is defined by an experimental approach to materials, merging traditional techniques with unconventional media to explore the physicality and unpredictability of matter. She studied Painting and Drawing at Ar.Co between 2018 and 2022, later completing the school’s Advanced Visual Arts Programme (CAAV+) in 2024, alongside masterclasses at The Art Academy London and Ar.Co in printmaking and oil painting. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in Lisbon and London, and in 2024 she presented her first solo show, Cresta, at Espaço Cultural Mercês. That same year she completed her first international residency at SomoS Arts in Berlin, developing Schattenland, later exhibited both at SomoS and at Espaço Cultural Mercês in 2025. In 2025, she was selected for Arte Jovem, Fundação Millennium BCP’s Art Prize, exhibiting at P31, Hospital Júlio de Matos.

Franka Struys is a Dutch visual artist based in Lisbon. After graduating in Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam and beginning a diplomatic career, she moved to Portugal and studied painting at Ar.Co in 2009. Since 2013, her work has been exhibited in Portugal and the Netherlands, including at ArtRoom Lisbon, Coletivo Amarelo, and in the group exhibition “Corrente De Ar.” She has completed residencies at RAMA and Córtex Frontal, and her works are held in municipal and private collections. Exploring the relationship between humans and nature, Franka transforms experiences from the Portuguese west coast into abstract, intuitive paintings influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and Japanese aesthetics. Working mainly on unprimed canvas with gestural pour-and-stain techniques, pigments, and natural materials, she invites viewers to slow down, connect with nature, and enter a space of contemplation.

Joana Mollet is an Anglo-Portuguese artist based in Sintra. Her work weaves together layers of lived memory, using a distinctive visual language to tell authentic stories translated into large-scale abstract paintings. In 2024, she completed a cycle of work inspired by her return to Portugal, culminating in her third solo exhibition. She is currently developing a multidisciplinary project bringing her abstract paintings into dialogue with a personal archive of rare historical material—photographs, recipes,. Essentially self-taught, Joana has pursued studies at Chelsea College of Arts and Heatherley’s School of Fine Art. In 2025, she was accepted into the mentorship programme of Krista Harris. Her work is held in corporate, private and public collections internationally. Joana has been selected as a finalist for the 2025 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize.

Tatyana Cristina (Lisbon, 2001) is a visual artist who graduated in Painting from the Faculty of

Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon in 2023. She currently lives and works in Lisbon. Her work

unfolds through a multidisciplinary practice that combines different media and experimental

processes to explore recurring thoughts and fragments of everyday experience.

Her approach often stems from the juxtaposition between the intimate and the collective, chance

and construction, transforming personal restlessness into visual and spatial compositions that resist

linear reading. Collected objects, archival images, and everyday elements emerge as raw materials

for the creation of fragmented narratives open to interpretation.

Each work is an inquiry into identity, memory, and the ways in which the body — physical or symbolic — occupies and transforms space. Through visual and performative strategies, the artist proposes sensitive experiences that engage the viewer’s gaze and invite an active dialogue with the work.

Sara Atrouni (Lebanon) is a visual artist based in Lisbon. Her practice is centered on the

material and sculptural properties of acrylic paint, exploring dried paint skins, layered surfaces, and

hybrid constructions. Atrouni investigates the behavior of materials in relation to form, surface, and

light, developing a precise yet dynamic formal language. Her work situates process and materiality

at the core of contemporary experimental painting and sculpture, emphasizing transformation,

tension, and the interplay between control and unpredictability.

Francesca Faulin (b. 1985, Venice, Italy) is an artist whose research-driven practice engages photography, writing, and the critical manipulation and reactivation of archival materials. Employing analogue and alternative photographic processes, Faulin crafts handmade artist books and unique prints. She holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Milan (2005) and completed a Master-level program in Fine Art Photography at IPCI, Lisbon (2021). Since 2021, Faulin has undertaken several artist residencies in Portugal and has presented her work in both solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and Spain. Her works are included in private collections in Italy and Portugal.

Carolina Piteira is a Lisbon-based visual artist whose work explores identity, memory, and the female experience through expressive, figurative compositions. Her paintings often portray women as central figures of emotion and strength, capturing the beauty and complexity of everyday life. Deeply inspired by Portugal’s cultural heritage, light, and textures, she weaves stories that connect personal and collective narratives.

Among her career highlights is the large-scale project Time Without Time / Out of Time, commissioned by EDP and exhibited at Central Tejo in Lisbon. She has also collaborated with leading brands, including Delta Coffee, and represented Portuguese creativity internationally as an Ambassador for “Portugal Sou Eu.” Her solo show No Teu Lugar (In Your Place) paid tribute to women’s roles and inner worlds, earning wide acclaim.

Carolina Piteira has exhibited across Europe — from London to Venice — continuing to bring a deeply human and poetic voice to contemporary art.

Maria (Lisbon, 1994) is a Lisbon based artist working with photography. With a degree in international relations and political science and a focus on the thematic of “violence, conflict and development" (London), followed by a transition to Photography at Ar.Co school of arts and visual communication (Lisbon), Maria's observer and intuitive look reflects her thirst and urgency to understand and learn about and from the realities that surround her, in a way that is lighter than it appears to be. Whether in the Democratic Republic of Congo or in her more intimate surroundings in Portugal, Maria questions that same apprehended reality or how society wants to define it, politically and socially. Maria's visual expression reflects her spontaneous and sensory character on perceiving authentic elements and environments, alive and moving, surrounding her

Helene Klug is a German painter based between Lisbon and Hamburg whose work explores the emotional presence of women as poetic, abstracted forms that hold memory, sensuality, and longing. Influenced by Mediterranean light, architecture, and her life in Portugal, she creates intimate atmospheres through terracotta tones, sculptural shapes, and quiet spatial arrangements. Blending cubist geometry with fluid, tactile oil surfaces, her figures appear fragmented or headless, oscillating between structure and softness. In her paintings, women boldly occupy space, becoming the central presence around which color, composition, and emotion unfold.

Photographer Lola Keyezua, better known as Keyezua, isknown for striking portraits that respond to stereotypes about African beauty. In evocative depictions of the body, she presents singular visions of dignity and resilience in high-contrast colors. Her acclaimed series “Fortia” (2017) wrestles with her relationship with her father, whose
diabetes resulted in the loss of use of his legs and his untimely death; it features women wearing highly sculptural masks made by Angolan men with physical disabilities. A visual storyteller, Keyezua examines issues pertinent to the African diaspora, such as female genital mutilation,
human trafficking, and the damages incurred by the adoption of Western beauty ideals. Keyezua lives and works in Luanda, Angola, where she also creates sculptures, videos, paintings, and poetry.

Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on self-portraiture to explore the complexities of womanhood. She developed a unique physi-digital mixed media technique in order to create works which incorporate her concerns around identity, self-image and digital representation within the working methodology.

Fontaine-Wolf studied Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts (BA, 2004) and earned her Master’s at University of the Arts London, Wimbledon (2015) supported by the Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award. Her work has been exhibited in leading institutions such as the V&A Museum and the Royal College of Art in London. In 2025 she received the Gulbenkain Grant for Artistic Creation and in 2024 she held her first institutional solo show at Haus Kunst Mitte in Berlin as well as being selected as a finalist for the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize. Fontaine-Wolf’s works have been acquired by significant public and private collections, including the Standard Chartered Bank (UK), the Berardo Collection and the Norlinda and José Lima Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art - two of the most important collections in Portugal.

Emilia Brandão Carneiro (São Paulo, 1982) is a Brazilian photographer based in Portugal whose work explores identity, divinity, and psychology through intimate portraiture and autobiographical narratives. Working with digital and medium-format analog photography, she draws inspiration from pictorialism and surrealism, shaping a visual language rooted in introspection and emotional depth. For over twenty years, her practice has unfolded through sensitive, personal stories that reflect her own journey of healing and self-reflection.

A LEICA Ambassador since 2020, Brandão’s work has been featured in Vogue, Art News, ELLE, El Mundo, and Marie Claire, and she has collaborated with Vogue, GQ, Elle, and Glamour. She holds a Cinematography degree from FAAP (São Paulo) and a Master’s in Photography from EFTI (Madrid).

Her recent solo exhibitions include Acervo Migratório (São Paulo, 2025), Sentimental Journey (Madrid, 2022), and Time to Heal (Madrid and Logroño, 2020–2021). She has participated in international festivals such as Open Walls by the British Journal of Photography in Arles (2023) and the Barcelona Foto Biennale (2022), and is the recipient of the 2023 Open Walls Arles award. Her work has been exhibited across Brazil, Spain, Germany, France, and Portugal and is held in several private collections.

Alice Marcelino is a Portuguese-Angolan artist who works between London, Lisbon, and Luanda. Her practice explores the intersections of culture, tradition, migration, and identity in contemporary global society. Drawing from her multicultural background, she creates work that examines how individuals navigate and maintain their identity across different cultural contexts.
Through photography, Marcelino investigates how cultural traditions evolve and adapt in contemporary settings. Her work creates a nuanced dialogue about identity in our ever-changing global landscape, exploring the delicate balance between preservation and transformation.
With her MA in Digital Media at Goldsmiths University in London, Marcelino continues to evolve her practice by examining how technology and globalisation influence our understanding of cultural identity and belonging. Working across three distinct cultural spaces, she creates art that serves as a bridge between different cultural realities, offering viewers a unique perspective on the complexities of contemporary existence.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4th

Exhibition Opening & Cocktail Reception – 6PM-9PM

Guests are invited to an evening reception marking the official opening of the exhibition.

Free Entrance

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5TH

“Breath & Balance: A Yoga Journey in Art” In collaboration with Baraza Yoga – 11:00 AM

An immersive session of movement and breath, harmoniously surrounded by art.

Tickets at barazayoga.com, 20 euros.

Afternoon Art Tour with POR:TA & Young Collector Circle - 6 PM

A curated walkthrough designed for emerging collectors and art professionals, offering deeper insight into the practices of the participating artists and the narratives that unfold throughout the exhibition.

By invitation.

Opening Hours – 2PM-6PM

free entrance

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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6TH

Breakfast with the Artists + Panel Talk – 10:30AM

Begin the day with a curated breakfast, followed by an engaging conversation with the artists about their practice, process, and the works presented in the exhibition.

Free entrance, RSVP required.

Opening Hours – 2PM-7PM

free entrance

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Opening Hours from DECEMBER 9TH:

Thursday 2–6 pm

Friday 2–6 pm

Saturday Closed

Sunday Closed

Monday Closed

Tuesday 2–6 pm

Wednesday 2–6 pm

EXHIBITION PROGRAM