42-A + 42-B [PADA] was produced during the International Residency at PADA Studios in January 2026.
Rafael Raposo Pires was granted the PADA Bursary to take part in PADA 55.
At PADA Rafael Raposo Pires was interested in reacting to the grid layout of the surrounding streets. Creating works that deal with the notion of changing direction, observing how corner materials shape imposition, or how intersections can be places of revelation.
The exhibition Over Crest showcases a selection of the work and took place at the Budapest Gallery in Budapest, Hungary, in June 2025.
Over Crest presents photographs that portray elements of passage, blockage, control, movement, recurrence and tension in urban spaces.
Rafael Raposo Pires developed the Over Crest project during his artistic residency in Budapest. Over the course of a month, he daily walked between the city center and its peripheral areas, crossing a changing landscape marked by the conversion of old industrial territories into new residential areas. Along this route, spaces and situations related to mobility, access, permanence and leisure are observed.
The derives were determined by the configuration of the urban landscape itself. Watercourses, bridges, railway lines, open spaces, dormitory neighbourhoods, urban parks, large sports facilities and industrial areas functioned simultaneously as obstacles and as points of (re)orientation. Each barrier forced a change of trajectory, revealing new spaces and other forms of relationships between different parts of the city.
Over Crest seeks to observe a condition common to many contemporary metropolitan areas, the expansion of the city, the transformation of previously peripheral territories and the growing pressure on the space available for housing and everyday life.
The title refers to the moment when a limit is crossed and what was hidden or inaccessible becomes visible. The photographs are in that gap, between the obstacles and the passage, between what separates and what allows us to move forward. These are images of spaces that emerge as a consequence of derives and that reveal a city being continually crossed.
The artistic residency has the support of Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (LAAR), in partnership with the Budapest Gallery.
wanderings displays photographs produced throughout 2024 in Sevan, Yerevan, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Elefsina, Athens, Øresund, Madeira.
It is the first publication edited by estúdio Atilho in Lisbon, with design by Mariana Ferreira.
44 pages, 15×21 cm, January 2025.
The city of Elefsina is home to the archeological site of Telesterion, an ancient Greek temple know for the Eleusinian Mysteries and one of the most sacred places in the region. Today the city has become a suburb of Athens, and due to the aggressive industrialisation during the XXI century many of its ancient remais were crushed to produce cement.
Elefsinian Wanderings (2024) showcases remais of ancient construction materials, juxtaposed with the materiality existing in the city’s streets nowadays. It is the result of walks between the city’s archeological area and surrounding industrial sites, guided by over-patterned concrete pathways, colourful marks and objects that propose to us a new memory from the past.
This project was developed during the Project SEEDS Art Residency (2023-24), a selection of photographs were part of the Urban Museum of Elefsina (2024) exhibition in Greece.
Erecting from the ground is an installation created during the Project SEEDS Art Residency (2023-24) at Oficinas do Convento in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. It is part of a larger set of artworks seeking to discuss issues of block or containment, permeability or dispersion, using materials collected around the artistic residency sites. Here, the use of earth as an aggregating material in juxtaposition to iron in the broken welds of a mesh, in an ephemeral attempt at repair.
This piece was selected for the Portuguese Emerging Art 2024 publication.
Encobrimento (Concealment) addresses themes of power and disguise, related to the transformation of places of periodic use and people’s desires. The project is focused on several coastal areas where the pressure created by a constant update of social preferences puts local activities, that have extended over time, at risk.
Spaces used for fairs and markets are visible, demarcated by differences in flooring or wear and tear. Details associated with places of worship that are partially covered. Vegetation is scarce or contained. The trail of the transformation of the landscape is left in plain sight, with access to the coastal area becoming increasingly distant.
The continuation of this project will be done through the publication of an author’s photobook.
Parcelas depicts land management and its transformation. It shows a landscape divided into plots through the construction of walls. The allotment’s state of abandonment, or rather its rest, is visible, giving space for vegetation to grow again. A construction that seems to be born a ruin, a ruin that multiplies.
