MAAT presents EXIST/RESIST—Works by Didier Fiúza Faustino: 1995–2022

October 5, 2022–March 6, 2023

Didier Fiza Faustino (born 1968), a French-Portuguese experimentalist whose work continually challenges and blurs the boundaries between architecture, design, and art, is the subject of the first institutional exhibition titled EXIST/RESIST.

The exhibition’s title, taken from two distinct works (Exist, 2016, and Resist, 2017), illustrates a driving conflict that pervaded Faustino’s creative investigations and that is still relevant in light of the increasingly difficult circumstances of physical and psychological survival in the modern world. The “body” emerges as a recurrent theme and measure of individuation, and as such, a location of economic and political struggle, whether it takes the shape of an installation, film, sculpture, editorial project, temporary architecture, or built-work.

Pelin Tan’s exhibition, which centers around four major lines of inquiry that recur in Faustino’s work: Housing and Dwelling, Borders of Bodies, Design as Resistance, and Agonism in Public Space, brings together for the first time a wide variety of works, preparatory materials, and prototypes—drawings, photos, models, large-scale installations, films, and objects. The exhibition, which includes both old and brand-new works—including Democracia Portátil and Too late for Tomorrow—loans from other countries’ collections, as well as never-before-seen documentation from the artist-private architect’s archive, is housed in a scenography created by Faustino’s studio, Mésarchitecture. The scenography was conceptually designed to bring together two important spaces in the museum and produce two distinct spatial experiences.

The main body of works in this mid-career retrospective are displayed in the towering large-scale structure at the center of the famous oval gallery, which is formed of twelve modules that depict an analogous data center and an ex-nihilo of the artist-studio. architect’s Democracia Portátil, one of the primary pieces, was reimagined for this exhibition at maat and will serve as the venue for the public program.

Loans from the Yves Klein Archive and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Julio Sarmento Estate, the Coleço Serralves—Museu de Arte Contemporânea, the Fondation Antoine de Galbert, the Frac-Centre—Val de Loire, Michel Rein Paris/Brussels, and the Galeria Filomena Soares are included in the exhibition.

With the participation of the Institut Français du Portugal.

October 5, maat
Book launch: Architecture for Disquiet Bodies

Talk with Lars Müller, Didier Fiúza Faustino and Pelin Tan, moderated by Beatrice Leanza.
On the occasion of this exhibition, a new book-as-manifesto is published by Lars Müller Publishers in two separate French and English editions. Edited by Christophe Le Gac, Architecture for Disquiet Bodies offers a comprehensive overview of more than 25 years of unique creations. Contributors include Marie-Hélène Fabre, Christophe Le Gac, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Pelin Tan, Troy Conrad Therrien.

More about the new season at maat

September is a month for fresh starts, and maat is kicking off a new cycle of exhibitions with a focus on design, urbanism, and the memory of industrialization. These subjects characterize a few of the museum’s intervention areas, even though they are presented using very varied discursive techniques and the programming is still open to further angles and inventive techniques.