LUMIAR CITÉ

Willem de Rooij
Hut Hut
21.02 – 17.05.2026

Info
Press-Release (port)
Press-Release (eng)

Benjamim Pereira, Gouveia, Lagarinhos; A Choupana móvel do pastor, 1978, colection of Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, E.P.E / Arquivo de Documentação Fotográfica

Through his work, Willem de Rooij critically engages global art histories and visual anthropology, juxtaposing appropriated objects and considering the interconnection between institutional contexts and contemporary forms of mediation. ‘Hut Hut’ is De Rooij’s first solo exhibition in Portugal, featuring a new site-specific installation and two rarely shown early works.

The effect of Rijksmuseum/Tropenmuseum and Hut, both from 1993, lies as much in what is visible as in what is obscured: each consists of a set of postcards partially covered with black gouache paint. Employing the double as a formal and rhetorical device, these early works articulate core concerns that have come to define De Rooij’s practice: the colonial and nationalist ideologies at the foundation of museums devoted to both art and ethnography, and the ethics and politics of collecting and display.

The installation ‘Hut Hut’, developed especially for Lumiar Cité, builds on these underpinings through a detailed study of shepherds’ shelters in the collections of the National Museum of Ethnology in Lisbon and of the Museo del Pastor in Villaralto, Spain. Since the fragile shelters cannot be removed from their places of preservation, De Rooij opted for ‘digital loans’, presenting them at Lumiar Cité by way of live streams from the two museums.

Using security cameras, De Rooij establishes a real-time dialogue between the objects and their museum contexts, the modern architecture of the Lumiar Cité exhibition space and the urban environment of Alta de Lisboa, where the gallery is situated. While drawing parallels with contemporary notions of surveillance and protection – the latter being the original function of these vernacular structures – here the work specifically addresses urban planning, the institutionalisation of cultural memory and the direction of the ethnographic gaze.

Since the early 1990s, Willem de Rooij (Beverwijk, 1969) has created temporary installations that analyse the politics of representation. Well-versed in the affordances of time-based media, he uses montage to combine appropriated objects. His practice is marked by a distinct corpus of precisely crafted objects and closely edited publications. A member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Willem de Rooij teaches at the Städelschule (Frankfurt) and Rijksakademie (Amsterdam). He co-founded BPA// Berlin program for artists in 2016. Together with Jeroen de Rijke he represented The Netherlands at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Solo exhibitions include presentations at the Centraal Museum (Utrecht, 2025), Akademie der bildenden Künste (Vienna, 2023), Portikus (Frankfurt, 2021), IMA Brisbane (2017), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt/Main, 2016) and Le Consortium (Dijon, 2015). He has also participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (Busan), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the 17th Jakarta Biennale and the 10th Shanghai Biennale.

In collaboration with Museu Nacional de Etnologia (Lisbon) and Museo del Pastor (Villaralto, Spain).