The Defense of Nature

“The Defense of Nature” is back in Lisbon, the result of a partnership between BoCA and the Lisbon City Council, with the aim of planting around 500 trees on March 23, at 9:00 am, on Avenida Santo Condestável.

In 2021, we proposed 7 artists to look at Beuys’ legacy, while observing their own mountains, resulting in 7 presentations of new artistic creations in natural spaces. The program “I want to see my mountains”, curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes, included the artistic creations “Passeios Verdes” by Diana Policarpo, “Cair Para o Alto” by Dayana Lucas, “Carrossel” by Gustavo Ciríaco, ” Monumento Para Amadores – Solar Boat” by Musa Paradisiçaa, “0” by Sara Bichão, “Sobre um futuro de coexistência” by the Berru collective and “Denominação de Origem Controlada” by Gustavo Sumpta. In 2022, at BoCA Summer School, artists Mariana Tengner Barros, Gustavo Ciríaco and Pedro Ramos ran a performing arts and visual arts workshop in Floresta de Monsanto, one of the places where we planted trees. In 2023, we planted 580 trees alongside the local population and in partnership with the project Life Lungs.

Now, in 2024, we continue the project “The Defense of Nature”, a 10-year project through which BoCA proposes to combine artistic creation and programming with the creation and programming of natural spaces. Based on the project by Joseph Beuys, “7.000 oak trees”, BoCA designs a diverse and sustainable plantation with a model that involves the collaboration of the local population, now from the municipality of Lisbon, to gather around the plantation of a forest of works of art.

“We can all be artists”: the iconic phrase by Joseph Beuys is called upon for this project as a participatory lever for elements of artistic and non-artistic communities. Anyone who considers himself an artist, in reference to this creative gesture of generating life, is invited to participate. Bringing together an extensive national and international artistic community, BoCA encourages cooperation between art and nature. Each plantation is then seen as an artistic gesture, in which the creation of the artistic object corresponds to the creation of life, that is, the plantation.

Sign up by March 23 on this page. We invite all citizens to participate in planting their tree and assign it a title. Each plantation, a work. Every citizen, an artist. Together, we will continue to build a forest of works of art.

Registration form here.