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the garden as
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The garden has long been imagined as a sanctuary: a cultivated space of care, repair, and quiet resistance against instability. Neither fully wild nor entirely controlled, it holds tension between vulnerability and resilience—mirroring the lived experiences of citizens who navigate displacement while cultivating new forms of belonging.
This year's cycle of Art & Craft Refúgio, situated inside Jardins do Bombarda, Lisbon's former psychiatric hospital, draws on the garden as a sanctuary as a metaphor for the selected artists working methodology. As a site of slow labour, shared knowledge, and seasonal cycles, the garden offers a framework for making that prioritises process over product, attentiveness over extraction. Within these workshops, craft practices become acts of tending—stitching, weaving, shaping, and growing—through which participants can reclaim agency, memory, and embodied knowledge often disrupted by migration.
The garden resists romanticisation. It foregrounds questions of access, labour, and ownership, reminding us that sanctuary is always political. By engaging refugees and migrants not as recipients of care but as co-cultivators of space and meaning, the workshops reimagine the garden as a collective commons: a place where artistic practice can foster solidarity, mutual care, and speculative futures rooted in shared ground.
This year's cycle of Art & Craft Refúgio, situated inside Jardins do Bombarda, Lisbon's former psychiatric hospital, draws on the garden as a sanctuary as a metaphor for the selected artists working methodology. As a site of slow labour, shared knowledge, and seasonal cycles, the garden offers a framework for making that prioritises process over product, attentiveness over extraction. Within these workshops, craft practices become acts of tending—stitching, weaving, shaping, and growing—through which participants can reclaim agency, memory, and embodied knowledge often disrupted by migration.
The garden resists romanticisation. It foregrounds questions of access, labour, and ownership, reminding us that sanctuary is always political. By engaging refugees and migrants not as recipients of care but as co-cultivators of space and meaning, the workshops reimagine the garden as a collective commons: a place where artistic practice can foster solidarity, mutual care, and speculative futures rooted in shared ground.
O jardim tem sido, desde há muito tempo, imaginado como um santuário: um espaço cultivado de cuidado, reparação e resistência silenciosa face à instabilidade. Nem totalmente selvagem nem inteiramente controlado, encerra uma tensão entre vulnerabilidade e resiliência — refletindo as experiências vividas pelos cidadãos que navegam o deslocamento enquanto cultivam novas formas de pertença.
O ciclo deste ano do Art & Craft Refúgio reconhece a sua localização no Jardins do Bombarda, um antigo hospital psiquiátrico de Lisboa, e recorre ao jardim enquanto santuário como metáfora para a metodologia de trabalho dos artistas selecionados. Enquanto local de trabalho lento, de conhecimento partilhado e de ciclos sazonais, o jardim oferece uma estrutura de criação que privilegia o processo em detrimento do produto, a atenção em vez da extração. Nestas oficinas, as práticas artísticas e artesanais tornam-se actos de cuidado — costurar, tecer, moldar e cultivar — através dos quais os participantes podem recuperar agência, memória e conhecimento incorporado.
O jardim, resistindo à romantização, coloca em primeiro plano questões de acesso, trabalho e propriedade, lembrando-nos de que o santuário é sempre político. Ao envolver refugiados e migrantes não como destinatários de cuidado, mas como co-cultivadores de espaço e significado, as oficinas reimaginam o jardim como um bem comum colectivo: um lugar onde a prática artística pode fomentar solidariedade, cuidado mútuo e futuros especulativos enraizados em terreno comum.
Meet the Artists - 2026
This year’s artists are united by overlapping interests: plant-based practice, connections to Jardins do Bombarda, and/or a focus on paper and print. Throughout the year, their practices will intersect through collaboration and exchange, culminating—together with the participants of Art & Craft Refúgio—in the design and production of a limited-edition artist’s book.
Os artistas deste ano estão unidos por interesses comuns: práticas baseadas em plantas, ligações com os Jardins do Bombarda e/ou foco em papel e impressão. Ao longo do ano, as suas práticas irão cruzar-se através da colaboração e do intercâmbio, culminando — juntamente com os participantes do Art & Craft Refúgio — na conceção e produção de um livro de artista de edição limitada.
Os artistas deste ano estão unidos por interesses comuns: práticas baseadas em plantas, ligações com os Jardins do Bombarda e/ou foco em papel e impressão. Ao longo do ano, as suas práticas irão cruzar-se através da colaboração e do intercâmbio, culminando — juntamente com os participantes do Art & Craft Refúgio — na conceção e produção de um livro de artista de edição limitada.
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Nina Fraser
Photo: Jona Jalink, 2025
Nina Fraser is a multidisciplinary artist and cultural facilitator. She works with paper, using collage as a methodology in both her visual artist practice - often site-specific - and to build community through formal and informal learning exchange. She holds a Postgraduate Degree in Curating and Commissioning Public Art from HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and Bachelor's Degree in Textile Art from Winchester College of Arts (UK). In 2025 she was a participatory artist for LABECO - Cooperative Laboratory for Artistic and Ecological Practices working between Lisbon and Marseille.
Miguel Domingues
Miguel António Domingues (b. 1982, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon, completed degrees in drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, and undertook postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. Exhibiting since 2006 in Portugal, Belgium, Germany and Austria, he has received several awards, including the Danny Vienne Prize, a DAAD scholarship, and the Santander Art Prize. His interdisciplinary work, combining drawing, sculpture and installation, has been presented in major institutions and site-specific contexts, and is represented in public and private collections.
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Marta Angelozzi
Marta Angelozzi is a visual artist born in Rome and based in Lisbon, graduated in London with a BA in Drawing and an MA in Art Education in Lisbon. Her practice explores drawing as an expanded, transitory action that extends into photography, installation, video, dance, and performance. Rooted in gesture, materials, place, and collaboration, her work engages people and environments through collective processes. Her work includes exhibiting and facilitating workshops and collaborative drawing processes in educational and artistic contexts, alongside transdisciplinary research that emphasize community, movement, and shared creative exchange.
Catherine Harrington
Photo: Chris Bristow
Catherine Harrington is a socially engaged artist with a practice based on storytelling. She stages participative events, performative works and temporary installations, often situated in public places, parks, edge spaces and communal gardens. Influenced by her background as an architect, her art events investigate and uncover the underlying narratives that shape particular sites, their landscapes and human co-occupation with local ecologies. Catherine currently divides her time between London and Lisbon.
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Arta Raituma
Arta Raituma (born 1996) is a multimedia visual artist from Latvia. In her artistic practice, she focuses on exploring the sublime in nature, rites of passage, and threshold situations. Raituma engages in creative placemaking, working with communities and investigating the fragility of relationships that can manifest as invasive, co-dependent, or symbiotic interactions between natural and urban environments and their inhabitants.
Annette Brinckerhoff
Born between Costa Rica, Portugal, and New England, Annette Brinckerhoff grew up surrounded by plants and nature. After briefly working in International Relations, she shifted toward permaculture, discovering natural dyeing in Thailand in 2018. Returning to Portugal in 2019, she began foraging local plants for dye. This practice deepened during the pandemic, leading her to found Tinctorium Studio in 2020, where she explores and shares a more mindful, earth-conscious way of living.
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