Since 2018, IPCI has annually hosted one of the exhibitions from the Encontros da Imagem, strengthening the connection between the school and one of the most significant international photography festivals. This year, the IPCI gallery once again joins the official program with 'Portobello Nights,' a project that combines Patrícia Almeida's photographic work with texts by J.G. Ballard. The exhibition offers a reflection on mass tourism and the transformations of contemporary Mediterranean spaces, based on images captured by Patrícia Almeida and excerpts from Cocaine Nights, a novel in which Ballard observes, with irony and clarity, the aestheticization of leisure and the emptying of reality.

In this exhibition, we will have another opportunity to see the remarkable Portobello work by Patrícia Almeida, now presented for the first time in dialogue with the work of her reference for this project, the writer J.G. Ballard, author of Cocaine Nights. It is an unprecedented encounter between a visual artist and a writer, an unlikely dialogue that reflects the spirit of the curatorial axis Dissidencies, in which the Encontros da Imagem propose new readings of established artists, placing them in dialogue with creators of an intermediate generation.