LISBON.- From Lisbon’s gothic monuments to Madrid’s neoclassical halls, BoCA Biennial 2025 cuts a new cultural route across two capitals, bringing more than twenty world and national premieres to theatres, museums, gardens, cinemas and public spaces. Titled Camino Irreal (Unreal Path) the fifth edition of the Lisbon-based Biennial explores the distortions of post-truth, the echoes of colonial memory, and the transformative potential of artistic displacement.
Running from 10 September to 26 October, BoCA 2025 activates a new Iberian axis for contemporary creation. The programme spans new commissions and interdisciplinary projects across performance, visual art, music and cinema — with works that traverse geographies, disciplines and identities.
Among the major premieres is Adilson, an opera directed by Dino D’Santiago — one of Portugal’s most celebrated contemporary musicians, whose work bridges Cape Verdean traditions, electronic sound and Lisbon’s Afro-Atlantic heritage — with a libretto by Rui Catalão. The piece tells the story of a man trapped in bureaucratic limbo, reflecting the structural invisibility faced by thousands living without full citizenship in the country they call home.
Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda presents both a new stage work and a large-scale installation exploring migration, historical memory and mythic transformation. Swiss director Milo Rau and French dramaturg and activist Servane Dècle co-create The Pelicot Trial, a durational performance reconstructing one of France’s most harrowing sexual violence cases.
Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa stages De Espiral en Espiral, rooted in colonial history and female divination practices.
Filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata return with 13 Alfinetes, a baroque fiction threading faith and desire across the visual legacies of Lisbon and Madrid. Choreographer Tânia Carvalho joins Andalusian singer Rocío Guzmán in a concert-performance reimagining Portuguese and flamenco traditions. Spanish choreographer Elena Córdoba and Portuguese artist Francisco Camacho reunite for A Fiction in the Fold of the Map, reflecting on memory and time through embodied research.
A new installation by Portuguese artist Adriana Progranó takes place in the public realm, continuing BoCA’s engagement with non-institutional space.
The programme also includes The Boys from Praia de Adoro, a poetic queer fiction by Spanish playwright and director Alberto Cortés and Portuguese painter João Gabriel, who together imagine a fictional cruising beach between Lisbon and Madrid as a site of intimacy, memory and reconciliation.
Founded in Lisbon in 2017, BoCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts is a transdisciplinary platform for artistic experimentation, international collaboration and site-specific commissions. Its programme occupies both established and unconventional spaces — from museums and theatres to cemeteries, palaces and gardens — engaging audiences in encounters across forms and territories. Previous editions have featured work by Marina Abramović, Grada Kilomba, Romeo Castellucci, Gus Van Sant, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, and Angélica Liddell.
In 2025, BoCA expands to Madrid, forming new institutional partnerships with Museo del Prado, Museo Reina Sofía, Museo del Traje, TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Filmoteca Española, Teatro de La Abadía and Goethe-Institut Madrid. In Lisbon, the Biennial returns to Centro Cultural de Belém, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, MAAT, Culturgest, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Teatro do Bairro Alto, Estufa Fria, Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, Carpintarias de São Lázaro and the Portuguese Cinematheque, among others.
Curated by John Romão, Camino Irreal defines the 2025 edition not simply as a theme but as a position: a refusal of institutional inertia, a step off the marked path. It is a curatorial gesture that welcomes uncertainty, multiplicity and invention.
