Title: "Boundless Borders"
Curator: Inês Valle
Artist: Rui Macedo

From date: 10/06/2026 (permanent display)
Venue: National Palace of Mafra, Portugal
Partners: National Palace of Mafra, Museu e Monumentos de Portugal, UNESCO, The CERA PROJECT, Orient Foundation (India). Project Sponsor bcp-Millennium Foundation Residency & Community Programme Funded by DGARTES

Exhibition Official Opening:
Date: 10 June 2026
Time: 4.30 PM
Location: National Palace of Mafra

(soon)

Rui Macedo (Évora, 1975) is a Portuguese visual artist who works exclusively in painting and site-specific installations. He holds a PhD in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. His practice interrogates the conventions of painting as both medium and exhibition form, challenging traditional notions of representation and authorship. Through perceptual strategies that unsettle the viewer’s expectations, Macedo expands the conceptual and spatial boundaries of painting, often creating works that resist conventional definitions of the medium. He has received prestigious institutional support, including grants from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Instituto Camões, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and FCT/CIEBA. His work has been presented in exhibitions at institutions such as Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado (Lisbon), MEIAC (Badajoz), Museu do Neorrealismo, Tabacalera (Madrid), and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (Brazil). His works are held in prominent public and institutional collections across Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Brazil, including the Portuguese State Art Collection, Culturgest, MNAC, IVAM, MEIAC, and the Benetton Foundation.

Inês Valle Inês Valle is a curator, artist, and creative producer whose practice is driven by international and interdisciplinary collaboration. She holds a BA in Fine Arts (Painting) and an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. She is the founder of The CERA PROJECT, a non-profit cultural organisation that fosters artistic dialogue between the Global North and South, promoting narratives beyond Western frameworks. Valle has collaborated with leading institutions, including Centro Cultural de Belém, Museu Coleção Berardo, CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Canberra Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Lagos, and Artspace Aotearoa. At CAM Gulbenkian, she coordinated the Portuguese strand of the European lighthouse project Bauhaus of the Seas Sails. Her curatorial work spans mainly Europe, Africa and the Middle East and includes exhibitions with artists such as Ângela Ferreira, António Ole, Ai Weiwei, Andrew Esiebo, Edson Chagas, Pablo Bartholomew, Marcelo Brodsky, Miguel Palma, Leo Asemota, Khaled Jarrar, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, George Osodi e Graeme Williams. Increasingly, her projects emphasise co-creation, community engagement, and transdisciplinary research, addressing questions of identity, ecology, postcolonial memory, and urban transformation.

Palácio Nacional de Mafra Link

Museu e Monumentos de Portugal Link

UNESCO Link

‍The CERA PROJECT

Fundação Oriente (Portugal & India) Link

Millennium Foundation – bcp

DGArtes

Please click here to access

• Press Folder (Click here)

• the Press Release (English / Arabic)

• Project official poster