Tiago Feijóo - “Painting allows me to listen to the world from within […].”

It was with views of the Douro, a landscape that so often serves as inspiration for him, that Tiago Feijóo spoke to Villas&Golfe. Between artistic creation and curating, he defines art as “a language of amplified listening”, and it is from his grandfather, Álvaro Pinto, an iconic figure of Porto Football Club, that he derives the discipline and passion that sustain it. Between the sensitivity and poetry of his words, we become immersed in a timeless conversation.

Your work is divided between curating and artistic creation – two distinct languages. Where do they intersect and how is leadership expressed in terms of artistic gesture and curatorial vision?
My work exists on the border between artistic creation and curating – two distinct fields, but which, in my career, feed off each other. Painting allows me to listen to the world from within, to capture vibrations that do not yet have language; curating, for its part, allows me to organise the world from the outside, listening to contexts, artists, institutions and spectators. […] Leadership, at this intersection, does not assert itself – it listens. It is a sensitive leadership, which operates through fine-tuning […]. For me, leadership means having vision, but also emotional responsibility for what is proposed to the world.

 «For me, leadership means having vision, but also emotional responsibility for what is proposed to the world.»

How do you channel your symbolic listening between the visible and the invisible through art?
For me, art is a language of amplified listening – a kind of listening that transcends the senses and reaches deeper layers of consciousness. When I paint, I am not just representing images, but listening to what has not yet been revealed in words. […] In this sense, art becomes a radar of consciousness, a symbolic GPS that guides us between what is visible in the present and what cannot be seen in what is yet to come.

What role did your grandfather, Álvaro Pinto, play in your artistic and personal development?
My grandfather, Álvaro Pinto, was someone who was fundamentally decisive in my upbringing. More than just a family figure, for me he represented an archetype of integrity, commitment and vision. With a remarkable career at Porto Football Club, where he was the longest-serving vice-chairman in the history of the club, […] the values he embodied alongside Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa – Discipline, Competence, Ambition and Passion – […]blossomed within me, as internalized rules, as ethical and emotional guidelines for life […]I learned from him that discipline does not preclude creative freedom, but rather sustains it; that ambition should never be confused with vanity, but understood as the desire to excel; that competence is a constant act of responsibility; and that passion is the vital spark behind any true gesture. The legacy I inherited from my grandfather was not just a memory, but a way of being in the world.

«Each exhibition I curate is the result of extensive observation […].»

Art lives between an instant and eternity. In your opinion, is a painting created to last or to ignite a moment?
For me, painting is an organism that breathes between time and timelessness. There is a spark in it that can ignite an instant […] and, at the same time, it has a vocation to endure, to continue conveying meaning through the decades, centuries or consciousnesses. I see no opposition between the ephemeral and the eternal, but rather a spiral: the true instant has a dimension of eternity, and that which is eternal exists reincarnated in successive instants.

Are mistakes your enemy or your ally during your creative process?
In my creative process, mistakes are accomplices – and sometimes teachers. Authentic creation does not come from a linear path, but rather from a constantly evolving field of discovery, where the unexpected can reveal deeper structures of being. In this context, mistakes do not constitute failures, but rather openings: points of rupture through which new language can enter. 

There are exhibitions that change the way we see the world. Which curating project have you enjoyed the most to date?
Each exhibition I curate is the result of extensive observation – not only of the works themselves, but also of the times we live in and the symbolic urgency of developing dialogues that transcend borders. The ones that stand out most to me are precisely those in which I am able to bring together international artists of enormous symbolic power with Portuguese artists, creating a common space where different languages come together, confront each other and open up to one another. At the moment, we can find precisely this at the Palácio Sotto Maior, where, in the exhibition ‘Mestres no Palácio’ (Masters at the Palace), which I organised with Dr José Miguel Amorim and Dr Edgar Souto, we have created this intense language of international union between various Portuguese artists, such as Vieira da Silva and Paula Rego, among others, with Picasso, Miró, and Salvador Dalí. I firmly believe that the Portuguese public has the right to access world-renowned works and artists in their own country, but also that these encounters should be favourable for our own creators. 

If you could spend an entire evening in conversation with a painter or artist from any era, who would you choose – and what would be the first question you would ask them?  
If I could sit down at a table with a historical figure, I would choose Leonardo da Vinci – not only for his artistic genius, which is recognised all over the world, but also for his profound scientific mind and multidimensional thinking, which saw the human body as a microcosm of the universe. His way of observing the world was almost symbiotic: he did not separate science from art, nor form from function – and in this I see a resonance with my own practice, where painting becomes a living language, and curating, a relational architecture of the invisible. My question would be direct and symbolic at the same time: “In the silence between putting pen to paper and discovery, what do you hear from the universe? What is the sound of form before it becomes body?” Leonardo, I believe, understood this.  

How do you balance your personal and professional life? Do you have any habits that you cannot do without in your daily life?  
For me, balancing personal and professional life is not about separating them – it is about integrating them. I believe that true art emerges when the being is whole. I try to live symbiotically with what I do, and that requires discipline, listening and being present. There are two daily habits that I never go without: morning silence and contact with water. Silence, before any external gesture, offers me an internal space where I listen, reflect, write or simply breathe. And then there is water. I try to swim whenever I can. Swimming is a ritual of presence and purification for me.

As someone who promotes Portuguese art outside Portugal, how would you define Portuguese art and art in Portugal today? 
Portuguese art carries within it a luminous melancholy, a poetry of resistance and reinvention. It is an art that often arises from silence, from intimacy, from an attentive eye for detail and time. But it is also an art that takes risks – that crosses borders with a restrained, almost whispered, yet utterly authentic force. I see art in Portugal as a fertile field undergoing profound transformation: artists and curators are more aware of their place in the world and their role in the aesthetic, symbolic and even ethical regeneration of society. […].

There is a project at Quinta do Lago that aims to transform it into a new artistic epicenter, with a strong educational and social component. Are these also the kinds of ideas that continue to motivate your career?
At the moment, several projects in which I am involved point to a new phase of artistic and cultural transformation, both in Portugal and on the international stage. In Quinta do Lago, the project aims to transform this iconic location into a new epicentre for the arts, with a strong educational and social component. On an international level, a project that is particularly special to me is taking place in Auvers-sur-Oise, the town where Van Gogh spent his last days and painted some of his most significant works. It was there that the Van Gogh Academy was recently founded – a dynamic, bold and visionary initiative that I helped to establish in partnership with Wouter Van der Veen and Alexandre Fonseca. We are working diligently to bring the Van Gogh Academy to Portugal as an international arts centre. In the city of Oporto too, where my emotional and professional roots are intertwined, we are working feverishly to prepare for the opening of a new museum in the city centre.

«For me, balancing personal and professional life is not about separating them – it is about integrating them.»

Text: Carla Martins
Photos: Ana Nogueira