This Famous Artist's Lisbon Home Is An Art Installation And Visitors Can Stay There

Lisbon has made a name for itself as a creative and artistic center, attracting many brilliant minds to this beautiful city, but Portuguese visual artist Ana Pérez-Quiroga‘s work sits in a category all its own. Originally from Coimbra, she has made Lisbon her home and “home” is a central theme in her most recent exhibition that was originally part of a larger project for her Ph.D. program called An Archive of Daily Life #8. Opening up her home and interactive installation space to the Culture Trip, Mr Perez-Quiroga chatted a bit about the project.

Emerging from a sequence of all of the artists’ installation works and based on a personal reflection on everyday objects, the project is a home turned art installation, with all objects intact maintaining the artists’ personal space, participants can “live” for a period of 2 days. The immersive program, designed like an Airbnb, requires participants to act as they do in their normal lives, and after interacting with this “living space” for 48 hours they were asked to write about their experiences.

“From the beginning, the director of the museum (who is also my curator) was interested in what would happen with something like this, that people can live this unique experience and see how it is to sleep inside a museum,” explains Pérez-Quiroga when describing when the director invited her to share a smaller version of her project with the museum.

Ana writes down her colour choices in her to do list

Pérez-Quiroga carefully designed and selected each part of the home, pulling ideas from her real-life home and borrowing furnishings (like books) from friends.

There are three stages to the project: Firstly, visitors can rent the apartment, participate in a dinner party or acquire any objects that are available for purchase within the museum. All bookings can be made directing by visiting Ana’s personal website.

For Pérez-Quiroga, working as an artist in Portugal is “gratifying” and although she splits her time between Lisbon and China, the Portuguese capital is the city that has captured her heart.

“My relationship with Lisbon is one of a profound love,” she says with a smile. “Every time I return (from abroad), I recognize that Lisbon is a beautiful city. It has a beautiful light, the people are extraordinary, the climate is marvelous.” She also included that it’s easy to live and work in Lisbon, and simple to get from one place to another.