The Exhibition Pharmakon is a collaboration between the Convergent Program from Anozero'21—22 and Colóquio Coimbra 30—2030 (Colloquium Coimbra 30—2030), organized by the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra, the Centre of Social Studies (CES) and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20). Pharmakon aims to reflect on the urban architecture and space of the city of Coimbra, from Roman times to contemporaneity. Given this context, it is a photographic exhibition, held through the invitation from the Coimbra Colloquium 30-2030 to the author, for the identified works to face off over two days.

No remedy is harmless. Pharmakon can never just be simply beneficial. Its essence or virtue cannot stop it from being painful. This painful fruition is a pharmakon within itself. Fruition takes part in both good and evil, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. Or rather, the oppositions are designed in their element. The horrible, the grotesque, the comical, the fantastical, the beautiful, the kitsch, the gracious, the tragic, the repulsive, the bland, or even the vomit are all under tension, in two different poles always at play. Few are the territories without two ends, a rope of things that happened and happen; and, in the end, the spasm of knowing if the rope spanned or not. The skeleton of death itself.

Jorge das Neves