The rock salt mine in Loulé, recently featured on the TV programme 'Portugal with Michael Portillo', is to become an art gallery for a temporary exhibition open to the public.
The exhibition is an artistic intervention in the 45km long rock salt mine in Loulé.
On April 17th, artists Maura Grimaldi, Natália Loyola and Victor Gonçalves will join the Alfaia Association and the Verão Azul Festival, with the support of the Portuguese Republic – Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts, for the opening of the exhibition Salaris - Fictions from Salt.
Each artist will occupy a space within the mine, creating a route that invites visitors on a journey through different artistic explorations of salt, geology and human relationships with the natural and technological environment.
“Descending 230 metres into the earth is more than a physical displacement, it is a displacement of scale. The mine is, at the same time, a human gesture and a force that surpasses us,” says artist and author, Natália Loyola.
For Victor Gonçalves, “this project is a kind of journey to the center of the earth, in a way that Jules Verne perhaps never imagined: not a search for fossils or volcanoes, but a descent into the invisible layers of geological chronology. Occupying an active mine is like entering a space where the plasticity of time materializes in strata, and where human action and geology meet in an aggressive and poetic way.”
Maura Grimaldi will create a space for immersive images, seeking relationships between the cinema experience and the underground world of the mine galleries.
The exhibition will open on April 17th between 4pm and 6pm and will be open to the public until May 2025.
Opening hours: weekdays, from 9am to 1pm and from 2pm to 6pm. Tickets cost 25 euros per person.
