Xerazade, a Colecção Interminável do CAM

By evoking some significant facets that shape those stories, and organising the exhibition route into fourteen sections, this naturally subjective gaze also seeks to bring the legendary protagonist, Scheherazade, to the present day, removing her from her specific cultural context.

Scheherazade, whose prodigious memory was praised by King Shahryar, became synonymous with infinite narrative and seduction by words. But in this exhibition, her symbolic rebellion is taken beyond that capacity for enchantment. The strong call of magic and verbal language, foundational in human nature and in the realm of individual identity, permeates stories, books and artworks.

The CAM Collection grows every year through its programme of acquisitions and is now presenting its 65th group exhibition since its opening in 1983.  The multiplicity of stories of which it is formed and the potential points of view that its 12,000 works have already inspired – and will continue to inspire – in the creation of exhibitions is, naturally, never-ending.

With ‘Histories of a Collection’ (2023), ‘Tide Line’ (2024), Leonor Antunes’ proposal for the Collection (2024), and now ‘Scheherazade’, CAM has sought to show recent acquisitions as well as some usually less visible works.

Storytelling, exhibiting and collecting are ways of making room for fiction and for memory that can be layered over time. Viewed as an open book, this exhibition will be periodically changed, with alterations being made to the sections and works, seeking adjustments according to the vague time of stories and the complex time of history. The greatest imperative will always be to keep it alive.