The first group exhibition of Portuguese art of the 21st century to be presented in the United States, Second Nature is both a portrait of recent artistic production in Portugal and an exploration of the relationship between human culture and the environment. Working in media ranging from watercolor to photography to video, artists in the exhibition consider the tension between the concept of an untouched natural world -a popular subject in art history- and the ways humans have dominated and reshaped the environment using modern technology.
The exhibition brings together works created over the past two decades by sixteen artists from different generations, each of whom employs modern technology and materials to capture, filter, and reinvent the natural world, thereby generating a “second nature.”
All of the works are drawn from the EDP Foundation Art Collection, the collection of contemporary Portuguese art that comprises the MAAT’s permanent collection.