We finish our review of the screenings cycle that took place during the “Art Madrid-Proyector'20” program with the BUT Film Festival (Netherlands) and the three Portuguese proposals of InShadow, Loop.Lisboa and FUSO - Lisbon Annual Festival of International Video Art.

While FUSO and Loop are exclusively dedicated to video creation and film proposals, InShadow and BUT host more cross-cutting initiatives where different disciplines are worked on or they give way to more experimental and underground works. For Art Madrid, Loop and FUSO came up with a joint proposal around the work of the artist João Cristóvão Leitão.

The InShadow festival presents the best of transdisciplinary artistic creation in the areas of video dance, documentary, performance, exhibitions and installations. Its 11th edition was held at a dozen venues in the city of Lisbon: Marioneta Museum, Teatro do Bairro, Portuguese Cinematheque, Junior Cinematheque, Santa Catarina Space, Mercês Cultural Center, Marvila Library, Appleton Square, FBAUL Cistern, Ler Devagar, Gallery Otoco and Fnac Chiado, with various proposals and unpredictable encounters between cinema, dance and technology.

The artworks selected by InShadow for Art Madrid were: "Complex of shadow", by João Afonso Vaz; "Mujer vacío", by Max Larruy y Berta Blanca T. Ivanow; "Excuse my dust", by Maria Stella Andreacchio, Stefano Croci & Agata Torelli; "Makyō", by Brian Imakura; "The act of breathing", by Hana Yamazaki; "Bubblegum", by Ryan Renshaw; "Walls of limerick", by Arturo Bandinelli; "Alta", by Antti Ahokoivu; "Sculpt the motion", by Devis Venturelli, and "Brute", by Cass Mortimer Eipper.

Frame from "Mujer vacío", by Max Larruy & Berta Blanca T. Ivanow

BUT Film Festival is one of the most alternative projects on the international scene and is exclusively dedicated to B series films, Underground and Trash Films. The organisers announce that during the five days of the festival, there will be an extra dose of films full of violence, absurdity, creativity and pettiness.

They warn that they are looking for visitors who... : • Aren't likely to scream at the sight of blood! • Will be able to admire creativity to absurd extremes! • Like to combine a cozy atmosphere with watching films!

BUT participated in Art Madrid with the following artworks: "Zure Zult" (2016), by Angella Lipskaya; "Birds of a Feather" (2019), by Dann Parry; "L'ours noir" (2016), by Méryl Fortunat-Rossi & Xavier Seron; "Fabulous friendly cooking" (2018), by Nicky Heijmen & Tobias Mathijsen; "Bravure" (2018), by Donato Sansone; "Ringo Rocket Star and his song for Yuri Gagarin" (2019), by Rene Nuijens; "The Scuzzies" (2019), by Jimmy Screamer Clauz.

Frame from "Birds of a Feather" (2019), by Dann Parry

Loops.Lisboa is an annual exhibition presented by Festival Temps d’Images Lisboa and the National Museum of Contemporary Art since 2014, it is a unique showcase exploring the loop as an essential form of the language of film and video art. Starting in 2020, it becomes part of and international network dedicated to the form the Loop. The network includes: Mario Gutiérrez Cru (Festival Proyector, Madrid - Spain); Sandra Lischi (Onda Video, Pisa - Italy); Tom Van Vliet (WWVF, Amsterdam - The Netherlands); Cine Esquema Novo collective (Porto Alegre - Brazil) and Irit Batsry and Alisson Avila Loops.Lisboa/Festival Temps D'Images (Lisbon - Portugal).

FUSO was created in 2009, as the only festival with an ongoing national and international video art program in Lisbon. FUSO showcases in free outdoor projections, at Lisbon’s museum cloisters, video programs that are selected and presented exclusively for the festival by national and international curators. In addition to the proposed programs, each year FUSO also honours one or more artists who are historically and fundamentally important in video art. One of the main aspects of FUSO is the promotion of new national creations through an annual Open Call contest open to Portuguese artists or foreign artists living in Portugal

Fotograma de "Ulysses' Portrait

“Ulysses’ Portrait” by João Cristóvão Leitão (Loops.Lisboa Award, 2015).

The video is part of a trilogy that includes Irineu’s Portrait and Mónica’s Portrait, Jury’s Award and Audience Award, FUSO: Anual de Vídeo Arte Internacional de Lisboa.

"Ulysses’ Portrait" is a giddy journey through time and through literature. A journey where Ulysses is entrapped by the mechanism that is the loop, which operates at a narrative level, at a spatio-temporal level (given the use of a single sequence shot) and at a visual level (by means of the constant reuse of the same imagery material). After all, "Ulysses’ Portrait" is nothing more than an act of questioning human identity when confronting it with the possibility of time’s circularity and with its objective and subjective durations. Ulysses is Ulysses. However, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t, simultaneously, Cervantes, Pierre Menard, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Homer, Tchekhov, Nietzsche, Borges and, undoubtedly, myself as well.

João Cristóvão Leitão earned a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre (Dramaturgy) at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School and a Master’s degree in Multimedia Art at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL/CGD Academic Merit Award). Currently acquiring a PhD in Fine Arts by the same institution, researching subjects related to the practices of expanded cinema and to the literary and philosophical universes of Jorge Luis Borges. Also obtained training from Guillaume de Oliveira (2013) of the Oskar & Gaspar collective.

As a creator, he develops performance, video art and installation projects, which have been displayed around the world (Austria, Brazil, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Peru and Portugal) and have been awarded several times.

The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.

Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.

Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.

The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.

This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.

The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.