BoCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts returns in 2025 with a groundbreaking proposal: a shared programme between Lisbon and Madrid. The biennial establishes a new Iberian axis of artistic creation and presentation, bringing together transdisciplinary projects that intersect performing and visual arts, music, and cinema. Curated by John Romão, this fifth edition is presented under the title “Camino Irreal”. Between the echo and historical weight of colonisation and the distorted shortcuts of the post-truth era, “Camino Irreal” is an invitation to deviation, symbolic displacement, and the possibility of reconfiguring the role of the artist and the spectator. A path that cannot be found on tourist maps or official guides, but pulses through the bodies that create, resist, and move—both geographically and artistically.
Next events
- Lisboa
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6 September
participation
Polo BoCA
BoCA Sub21
BoCA Sub21 is a participatory and experimental project that was born in Lisbon during the first edition of the BoCA contemporary arts biennial. For young people aged between 16 and 21. -
10 – 11 September
theatre
Teatro do Bairro Alto
Alberto Cortés
Analphabet
The piece conjures the figure of a romantic ghost by the sea, who sings, narrates, and questions the idea of the couple. This poetic, queer, and tragic spirit emerges from the pain of love, carrying an open wound and an imperfect language. The entity visits couples in crisis, not to heal, but to expose tensions and violences, particularly within queer relationships shaped by patriarchal structures. -
10 September – 13 October
Installation, visual arts
Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea do Chiado
Felipe Romero Beltrán
Instruction
The project Instrucción explores the movement of the body in the crossing of the Spanish border, through a collaborative choreographic creation by Lucia You and Bilal Siasse with three dancers. Focusing on gesture and the experience of the limits of the State, the work rejects traditional representation and instead documents the process, conversations, and exchanges between participants. In parallel, photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán spent three years documenting the migration and integration of young people who crossed the border by boat.
- Madrid
-
6 September
participation
Goethe-Institut Madrid
BoCA Sub21
BoCA Sub21 is a participatory and experimental project that was born in Lisbon during the first edition of the BoCA contemporary arts biennial. For young people aged between 16 and 21. -
11 September
performance, visual arts
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa
De Espiral em Espiral
“De Espiral em Espiral” invokes the deviation as a form of resistance: through an intimate gesture, the imperial logic is subverted. The performance transforms the stage into a space where the political and the emotional interweave, and where the artist’s body becomes a medium between temporalities, geographies and languages. -
13 September – 23 October
cinema
Filmoteca Española
João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata
Malamor / Tainted Love
Malamor / Tainted Love is the name of a film cycle that brings together BoCA, Cinemateca Portuguesa and Filmoteca Española in a collaboration dedicated to cinema as an affective, political, unclassifiable territory. João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata are the latest to join Cinemateca Portuguesa’s Guest Directors series.