5 SHOWS is the new Artissima twice-monthly feature that recommends 5 exhibitions not to be missed in various geographical areas and cities around the world, chosen from the viewpoint of curators and directors of important institutions who live and work in these contexts. A different way to find guidance in the discovery of global contemporary art, from a personal and always up-to-date perspective.
The sixth focus is on Lisbon, with a selection by Marta Mestre, Curator at MAC/CCB, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belém Cultural Centre in Lisbon.
Here are the 5 exhibitions currently on display that she has chosen for our readers:
May I Help You? Posso ajudar?
MAC/CCB
Permanent exhibition
The everyday question “May I help you?” was used by Andrea Fraser in a performance that addressed the complex institutional relationships within the art world. The same question may also be turned towards the museum itself: what kind of help is actually being offered, and what kind of connection can still be expected in an era of increasing fragmentation, dissonance and impermanence? The exhibition draws on five decades of artistic production, from the 1970s to today, and features works by ninety artists—including Ad Minoliti (in the museum’s main hall), Alberto Carneiro, Carla Filipe, Doris Salcedo, Helena Almeida, Gabriel Abrantes, Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, Júlia Ventura, Kara Walker, and Richard Serra, among many others.
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Bruno Zhu. Belas Artes
CAM
Up to 27.07.2026
In ‘Belas Artes’, Bruno Zhu addresses structures of power inherent to museological practice using an idiosyncratic conceptual approach.
Influenced by fashion design, publishing and scenography, the work of Bruno Zhu (Porto, 1991) departs from the object as a means to explore notions of agency, authorship, consumption, and power. In ‘Belas Artes’, the artist reflects on collecting, exhibition design and the role of museums as producers of artistic value.
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Tatjana Doll. Come In
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
Up to 16.05.2026
Come In is Tatjana Doll’s third exhibition at Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art. The twelve paintings presented here provide insight into the current state of her artistic project.
As is the case with DOLL’s oeuvre as a whole, each of the works in this exhibition is a secondary image. Yet they are not secondary in relation to the corporeal world of “reality”; rather, they are secondary in relation to other, already existing images — on the one hand, depictions of real objects (in this exhibition, cars), and on the other, sign-like images such as pictograms and postage stamps, or figurative images such as museum art and comics.
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Metanoia IV, Future Imperfect
Salto
Up to 11.04.2026
Metanoia IV, Future Imperfect revisits works and concerns from the previous exhibition on Bornholm, while opening to a more unstable and porous field. In the exhibition, we are faced with a constellation of heterogeneous perspectives on the confrontations, fears and uncertainties, as well as the traps, manipulations and regimes of instability that permeate contemporary existence.
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Brama. Mané Pacheco
Galeria Quadrum
Up to 07.06.2026
Mané Pacheco’s artistic practice explores unstable points of contact between nature, technology, and industrial production, proposing hybrid ecologies in which organisms, materials, and infrastructure become indistinguishable. The artist incorporates potentially toxic or contaminated substances that are far from functioning merely as critical remnants of a waste economy. Her work features visual devices that evoke intruder-creatures: ambiguous forms that straddle the line between organism and artefact and seem to emerge from disturbed ecosystems.
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If you want to discover the institutions explored so far, here are the previous episodes:
Emirati Arabi Uniti | China | Norway | London | New York