Kraków-Affiliated Exhibition at Lisbon’s Macau Museum
The contemporary art exhibition “Wondersome and Peculiar Voyages,” featuring Kraków–Macau artist duo Marta Stanisława Sala and Cheong Kin Man, will remain on view at Lisbon’s Museum of the Macau Scientific and Cultural Centre (CCCM) until 17 August 2025. The extension was announced by the CCCM. The project was prepared in partnership with the City of Kraków.
Lisbon City Council described the show as “a rare constellation of artistic autoethnographies.” The exhibition traces historic and cultural connections between Kraków and Macau through textiles, video, and artist books, with themes of global mobility, hybrid identity, memory, and language.
The project follows Sala and Cheong’s 2024 debut “From Copenhagen With Love” at Krakauer Haus in Nuremberg, Kraków’s only permanent mission abroad. It is their first major exhibition in Portugal. Colombian researcher Lorena Tabares Salamanca curated the show, which also includes works by German filmmaker Deborah Uhde. Sala and Cheong present seven joint works, five of them on public display for the first time.
A central installation, “The Compass of Utopia” (Kompas Utopii), fills a dedicated standalone room in the CCCM’s gallery. This textile and bamboo work was created with support from the Cities of Kraków and Nuremberg and from Fundação Oriente. It draws links between Kraków and Macau, referencing figures such as Jesuit scholar Michael Boym, who studied in Kraków, and 18th-century adventurer Count Maurice Benyovszky, both connected historically to the Far East.
Other works include “Apocalypses” (Apokalipsy), a textile installation and artist book commissioned for the 2023 Art Macao Biennale, and a new experimental video based on interviews with members of the Macanese diaspora in Brazil.
Public events accompanying the exhibition have taken place in Lisbon and Porto, including an artist talk at the Goethe-Institut Portugal and translingual recitals with improvised music by Macau Experimental Theatre, held at venues such as Porto’s Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis.
The project received honorary patronage from the Polish and Colombian Embassies in Lisbon, with support from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Fundação Oriente, Goethe-Institut Portugal, Boym Institute of Poland, and Macau’s Babel Cultural Association.
