Power Plants by Portuguese artist Beatriz Manteigas takes as its starting point the landscape she lives and works in - the surroundings of Albergaria-a-Velha in the Aveiro region - where eucalyptus monoculture covers roughly 80% of the territory and is simply called "the forest". Before the eucalyptus there were pines, and no one alive remembers any older forest.

At the heart of the installation are three looping videos with sound. The first captures a multispecies forest in Mata Nacional do Bussaco, recently named one of the four "therapeutic" forests in the world. The second shows the artist's local eucalyptus plantation. The third presents a "forest" of solar panels, the "power plants" from the show’s title, which refers to Portugal's June 2026 Mapa Verde, a government tool identifying land suitable for solar and wind projects. In Albergaria-a-Velha alone it proposes nearly 30% of the territory for solar. The artist sees another chapter of the same story - after pine and eucalyptus comes a monoculture of metal panels, and "energy transition" quietly turns into "energy expansion".

The videos are accompanied by a selection of older and new works in various media, from ceramics and photography to drawing. All relate to the extractivist human approach to nature, whether hidden behind the paper industry's profits, forest management plans or the promise of green energy. The exhibition asks what we now allow ourselves to call a forest, and whom the name serves.

Beatriz Manteigas (*1990) is a visual artist, NGO director, educator and researcher whose practice moves between drawing, interdisciplinary approaches, and research-based practices. She earned her PhD in Drawing at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (2022) where she is now Professor of Drawing. She also holds an MFA in Artistic Anatomy (2014) and a BA in Painting (2012) from the same institution. Her studies have also taken her to the University of Porto, the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and the Royal Academy of St. Petersburg, and she has lived and worked for short periods in London and Düsseldorf.

In 2016, she co-founded Associação Quinta das Relvas, an ecological farm and cultural association where she currently lives and works, presiding over the board and coordinating the Arts Department. That same year, she became an integrated researcher at CIEBA – Center for Research and Studies in Fine Arts. Alongside her artistic practice, she worked as an illustrator between 2009 and 2014, contributing to children’s books, magazines, and newspapers such as Diário de Notícias. Since 2009, her work has been presented in exhibitions and projects across Portugal and internationally, with highlights in Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, England, France, Scotland, Spain, Turkey, and the USA. She has also participated in artist residencies in Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and the USA. Her works are held in both public and private collections in Portugal and abroad.

Curators: Veronika Čechová, Tereza Jindrová