EXHIBITION // TALKS
Augusto Brázio
Born in Brinches, Serpa, in 1964, Augusto Brázio studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon.
His professional career in photography took root in the 1990s, developing into a prolific journey marked by the publication of over ten books. In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious first prize for Photojournalism by Visão / BES. He was an active member of the influential Kameraphoto Collective and was selected as one of the thirteen Portuguese photographers featured in the RTP television program Entre Imagens. In recent years, his artistic focus has shifted toward deeply personal projects, through which he reflects on issues of immigration, belonging, and the socio-cultural occupation of territory.
Brázio’s work is highly regarded in the contemporary art scene and is represented in major public and private collections, including the BES/Novo Banco Photography Collection, the Centro de Artes Visuais in Coimbra, the PLMJ Foundation, the Encontros de Imagem in Braga, the EDP Foundation, the Centro de Artes de Sines, the Norlinda and José Lima Collection, and The Neverending Collection in Spain.
Located along the old Military Route—a 19th-century defensive axis that later became a symbolic boundary between Lisbon's center and outskirts—Reboleira is a neighborhood that reflects the urban contradictions of 20th-century Portugal. Born in the 1960s and 1970s, this neighborhood testifies to the emergence of an urgent urbanism, born outside of official plans, laws, and official maps.
More than a simple cluster of illegal housing, this was the site of survival architecture. The shacks, the self-built structures, the improvised materials—all point to acts of resistance in a country in transition, between the collapse of the colonial empire and the unfulfilled promise of modernity. Two major migratory flows passed through here: first, those arriving from the rural interior in search of work in the capital; later, repatriates from former African colonies, fleeing war and the collapse of the imperial project.
Both found an urban void in which to assert their presence: a void left by the state, which never truly reached the periphery.
Reboleira is not a forgotten place; it is a persistent space. Today, some houses still stand, scattered throughout an ever-evolving urban fabric. They are the material remnants of an era that the city has tried to erase, yet continues to confront us. These fragile structures, often rendered invisible, are involuntary monuments to a stubborn memory, not only of poverty, but also of the urgency of those who, faced with abandonment, have built a life for themselves.
In this fragmented territory, the city reveals its rawest face: a face in which inequality is inscribed in the space itself. And it is precisely in this fracture—between what has been denied and what has been affirmed out of pure necessity—that Reboleira stands as a living, albeit wounded, document of contemporary urban history.