The exhibition, developed specifically for the museum based on research into its collection, is loosely inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's title, The Word for World is Forest. It proposes a reflection on nature not as something external to culture, but as a material and imaginary construction, using the forest as a starting point to establish relationships between historical objects, materials, images, and contemporary works.
Catarina Leitão's research at the MNSR collection shifts the question of nature's representation to the very matter of the works. Ceramics, textiles, stone, ink, and plant matter intersect in an installation where different ways of representing, transforming, and constructing the world dialogue.
Objects from different sections of the collection, including ceramics, animal and plant motifs, small agates, and landscape paintings, are gathered in a kind of cabinet of curiosities. Temporarily removed from their usual categories, they establish new affinities and reveal different ways of transforming nature into image, matter, object, and artifact.
This universe dialogues with Catarina Leitão's Naturfaturas, sculptures that bring together growth and fabrication, organic and industrial matter. Artificial grass and other elements in the exhibition space challenge the boundary between the natural and the constructed.
The installation extends into the Museum's garden, creating continuity between interior and exterior and making the boundaries between nature and culture, collection and world less stable. The forest is presented not as a landscape to be represented, but as a form of relationship, a web where materials, images, objects, and languages meet, contaminate, and mutually transform each other.
With work developed across sculpture, installation, drawing, and artist's books, Catarina Leitão interrogates the cultural construction of what we call nature and the relationships between the organic, the human, and the fabricated. Her work is included in public collections such as the State Contemporary Art Collection, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the PLMJ Foundation.
The exhibition 'O Mote do Mundo é a Floresta' can be visited at the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis from October 17, 2026, to January 31, 2027, from Tuesday to Sunday, between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM. Admission is free for residents in Portugal.
