VALE DA AMOREIRA
Stories from a Neighborhood on the Move

Vale da Amoreira: Stories of a Neighborhood on the Move

​

​

This bilingual (Portuguese and Cape Verdean) exhibition invites visitors to discover the history, people, and struggles of Vale da Amoreira. Born in the 1970s amid decolonization and the April Revolution, the neighborhood became home to retornados, internal migrants, and African immigrants. Amidst cultural diversity, social tensions, state neglecy, and community reinvention, Vale asserts itself as a vibrant, creative, and pluralistic territory. Through ethnography, testimonies, archival documents, photography, and artistic interventions, the exhibition reveals a neighborhood that is often stigmatized, yet essential to understanding the transformation of urban margins in contemporary Portugal and imagining a more just and common future.

 

Coordinated by Elsa Peralta, the exhibition showcases photography by Bruno Simões Castanheira and presents an original poem by Joãozinho da Costa alongside an artistic intervention by Pedro Pinhal—both of whom grew up in Vale da Amoreira.

Rather than merely revisiting the past, this exhibition is made with and for the people of Vale da Amoreira, exploring themes of memory, belonging, and resistance.

​