SAM!24
Building on the legacy of its founder, Pablo Berastégui Lozano, Salut au Monde! begins a new era with a new curatorial team and the SAM!2024 program. SAM!2024 features photography exhibitions, discussions, and photobook presentations. The program examines the impact of globalization on social and cultural identities, emphasizing 21st-century displacement. It explores Portugal's role in the global south, covering return migration, urban-rural disparities, and gentrification.
Eager to Return to Paradise (2015-2024) documents the annual return of Portuguese emigrants to their villages of birth during the month of August. The series captures the cultural and emotional tensions that arise in a daily life divided between different countries. In the photographs, the fervor of the religious festivities contrasts with signs of modernity and prosperity, with faith and hardship giving way to celebration. The exhibition takes a look at a non-urban Portugal which, throughout history, has resorted to exodus as a means of subsistence, and for which traditions are an essential way of preserving identity.
Cecília de Fátima was born in Porto in 1983 and lives in Montalegre. She studied photojournalism at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Her documentary projects focus on the rituals of Portuguese popular culture that persist outside the big cities, such as festivals, pilgrimages and other traditions.
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