Maja Escher’s exhibition "vi uma cobra a voar"
Beja, January 31st 2026, h
Where Futurama - Espaço de Artes e Conhecimento
Free entry
The exhibition ‘vi uma cobra a voar’ draws on the surrealist imagery of popular poetry to invoke an ancient relationship between body, land, and word. Maja Escher excavates buried symbols—memories preserved by the earth beneath stones—in those distant places where words still retain their magic. Around us emerge fragments of an upside-down world, where borders and binaries dissolve, where the sea burns and summer snows, where lizards rain down and apple trees bear walnuts.
Stained by the colors of the earth, they speak to us of secrets passed by word of mouth, of ancient spells, winged serpents, and comets fallen into the open sea. Through alchemy and ritual, the hand transforms humus and language into the same living matter: clay is kneaded and (en)chanted, transmuted into signs of almost-forgotten alphabets, infused with the resonance of the earth’s stomach and the murmur of imagination—all the whispers that repeat to us: we are still alive.
Maja Escher (1990, Santiago do Cacém) lives and works between Lisbon and Monte Novo da Horta dos Colmeeiros, in the municipality of Odemira.
She completed her BA and MA in Multimedia Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (2008–2014), including an Erasmus scholarship in London at the Architecture and Visual Arts School (2011). She also studied Waldorf Pedagogy at the Waldorf Institut Witten-Annen in Germany and attended a Ceramics course at Ar.Co, Lisbon, where she was awarded an Individual Project scholarship (2018/19).
She regularly participates in artist residency programs, including recent residencies such as: CEENTAA Artist Residency, with Alejandro Alonso Díaz, at Tapada da Tojeira, Portugal (2024/2025); Projecto Lugar Artistic Residency, as a guest artist at the Modern Art Centre – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2024/2025); and AIR Artist in Residence Munich, curated by Yara Sonseca Mas, at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2024), with the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. She also took part in the artistic residency How to Make It Rain (in 5 Steps) at Worlding, London (2021), supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and developed the participatory project Mastro dos Vizinhos at Casa da Cerca – Contemporary Art Centre (2019).
Recent exhibitions include: Lugar Semente, CAM – Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2025); Finalists Exhibition – EDP Award, MAAT, Lisbon (2025); How Does It Feel on the Tongue?, curated by Jesse James, at the FRACC Ignition Space, Fall River, USA (2024); Submerso / Percolação das Águas, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana (2024); CATHARSIS, Porto Design Biennale (2023); MATER, with Virgínia Fróis and Marta Castelo, at Pavilhão Branco – Lisbon Municipal Galleries (2023); Só Pedimos Que Nos Semeiem na Terra, with Sérgio Carronha, at Monitor Gallery Lisbon (2022); and Um Dia Choveu Terra, curated by Filipa Oliveira, at the Municipal Gallery of Almada (2020).
Maja Escher’s artistic practice has a collective and hybrid dimension, in which drawings, found objects, collaborative practices, and fieldwork methods are integral to the development of site-specific installations and research-based projects.
Establishing relationships with places and people is essential to her working process: her projects often emerge from moments of sharing—a conversation, a song, or a found or gifted object. Clay, reeds, ropes, stones, vegetables, and other elements found or offered during her field research are frequently combined with riddles, popular sayings, and songs, creating a tension between popular and scientific knowledge, magic and technology.
