CAROS AMIGOS / Ato I: Mi casa es mi casa

CAROS AMIGOS
Act I: Mi casa es mi casa

This exhibition marks the beginning of CAROS AMIGOS (Dear Friends), a collaborative project between Athena and Galeria Verve (São Paulo), conceived as a gesture of rapprochement among artists, curators, and exhibition spaces. The proposal unfolds in two stages and two distinct territories, suggesting a choreography of exchanges, affections, and displacements between the two institutions.

The title CAROS AMIGOS carries an intentional ambiguity: on one hand, it evokes the close and affectionate bond between the galleries—one that here extends to artists and the public; on the other, it pays tribute to the historic Brazilian magazine of the same name, published between 1997 and 2017, which stood as an important platform for critical thought, editorial freedom, and a multiplicity of voices. Just as the magazine sought to foster encounters between different perspectives and narratives, this project aims to build bridges between visual poetics that, while distinct, share a sensitive attunement to the world.

For this Act I, titled Mi casa es mi casa, Athena invited Verve to occupy the Casa Room with full curatorial freedom. In response, Verve proposed a meeting between two Rio-based artists represented by the gallery, Felippe Moraes and Mauro Piva, and Laura Belém, represented by Athena.

The title Mi casa es mi casa arises from the desire to bring together artists whose practices, though singular, share an attentive engagement with the subtle spaces between visible and invisible, rational and intuitive, language and silence. The choice of Moraes, Piva, and Belém is rooted precisely in how their works converge through a shared sensitivity to experiences of time, presence, and the instability of form. Moraes explores the tension between science and spirituality in installations that evoke the cosmic and meditative; Piva expands drawing as a language where gesture accumulates in layers of detail and irony; and Laura Belém creates poetic, fragile images that float between memory and imagination. United in this first act, the three artists construct a landscape of subtle crossings—where the house that shelters also opens itself to the other, and where the poetic neighborhood of their works gives rise to unexpected encounters, silent affinities, and a fertile field of coexistence.

More than an exercise in cross-curation, CAROS AMIGOS is an experience of mutual listening, in which each gallery alternately assumes the role of host and guest. In a context increasingly marked by conflict, urgency, and polarization, the project insists on the construction of collaborative networks that value coexistence, exchange, and shared creation.

Act II, scheduled for early 2026, will take Athena to occupy Verve’s space in São Paulo, closing the cycle with new developments, contexts, and, inevitably, new questions.

Galeria Verve