Project CONTAINERS aims to play a dynamic role by embracing a non-conventional format in contemporary public art. This role translates into promoting the artistic manifestations of acclaimed artists in the Portuguese and international arts scenario, focusing on Site Specific artworks – compositions specifically created to exist in a given place. This conceptual solution – Site Specific – targets the need to rehabilitate and revitalize urban spaces, without losing their identity or altering their nature, by redirecting or redefining their core priorities and their purpose, focusing on that given location.

The project aims to recycle a space through already existing objects, reorganizing and presenting them as elements that are as important as the artistic objects themselves.
By internalizing these notions and taking into consideration the location of the project, in Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB), CONTAINERS aims to expand art into traditional spaces and promote the use of supports that previously lacked museum-like characteristics, by promoting a more equitable access to culture, which is a fundamental element to increase civic consciousness in modern societies.
Without cultures cannot have a true civic consciousness.

Thanks to this aesthetic (but also pragmatic) approach, we believe the project will be able to achieve an ideal associated with making art accessible to the masses, as true manifestation of the concept of public art, and through which art comes into contact with the spectator in a spontaneous way. In order for this to happen, some conscious effort is needed from the spectator’s side. This is also, the perception of Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) and Museu Colecção Berardo (MCB) that, since the beginning have faced this initiative as a chance to narrow the bonds between the artistic community and the population, while simultaneously supporting projects of cultural / artistic nature.

CCB and MCB consider that project CONTAINERS finds in the artistic territory the perfect spot for developing public art initiatives.

The scheduled exhibitions are extremely welcome in the arts community, due to the participation of some of the biggest names in the national and international contemporary art world. Theme-wise there is an abandonment of classical themes as commemorative content, and a new use of personal poetics and subjects of everyday life, including, in some cases, social situations (new genre public art). Multidisciplinary is becoming an increasingly more popular practice in contemporary public art. The world has been witnessing a symbiosis and appropriation of the language of fields such as architecture, equipment design, advertising, sociology, ecology, among others.