In this new body of work — presented publicly for the first time — Benedita Santos continues her exploration of female portraiture through the lens of abjection, intimacy, and medieval revival aesthetics. Drawing from Julia Kristeva’s seminal text Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, particularly the chapter “Those Females Who Can Wreck the Infinite,” the exhibition reflects on women as figures historically positioned at the threshold between fascination and fear, desire and disorder.
Kristeva’s analysis of the feminine as a destabilizing force resonates throughout Santos’ paintings: women who dissolve boundaries, challenge systems of control, and inhabit spaces between sanctity and transgression. Echoes of Lady Macbeth, medieval iconography, devotional imagery, and grotesque beauty emerge across the works, where tenderness and unease coexist.
Alongside this theoretical framework, the exhibition is also guided by the emotional landscape of Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese — a meditation on belonging, instinct, and the right to exist beyond guilt or social expectation. Between darkness and release, Santos constructs portraits that reject idealization and instead embrace vulnerability, corporeality, and transformation.