Finalist of the Sestante Art Prize 2025 in Cascais

This exhibition took place from 12 to 20 December 2025. My other exhibitions are on my exhibitions page.

I was delighted to be selected among the finalists of the Sestante Art Prize 2025, organised by Sestante Art Gallery in Cascais, in partnership with LOOMA. The finalists' exhibition, The Image Within – A Imagem que te Habita, ran from 12 to 20 December 2025.

The Image Within

The gallery presented the exhibition as an invitation to dive into the inner side of creation: the image that lives in each artist, that private space where memory, emotion and imagination meet to give shape to what cannot be said out loud. More than a theme, it is a question: what shapes our creative gesture?

Each work becomes a fragment of that inner territory, where the personal meets the universal. The curators chose diversity on purpose, welcoming very different languages, techniques and sensibilities. At a time when uniformity threatens imagination, the exhibition was a reminder that art can be a space of poetic resistance, where every artist's singularity counts. Desire, fear, memory and hope appear in every piece, and each artist expresses them in their own way.

Soul Dance, the energy from within

For this edition, I chose to present Soul Dance, a painting very close to my heart. It expresses the inner rhythm that drives me, that breath always looking for a little harmony in the middle of chaos.

In this painting, colour becomes breath and movement. Reds, yellows, greens, blues and violets collide and merge on a deep black background, like a cosmic dance where light and shadow answer each other. Soul Dance is that intimate dance between strength and fragility, between the visible and the invisible. It is the image that lives in me.

Being among the 15 finalists was both an honour and a joy, and an encouragement to keep going.

A constellation of inner worlds

The curator, Fabiana Vizzani Reis, reminds us that identity is born from difference, not in opposition to it. Her approach shaped the whole exhibition. As Gilles Deleuze wrote: “Difference is not what stands in opposition to identity, but that from which it is born.”

Each work opened a window onto what lives within us. Together, they formed a constellation of inner worlds: a shared way of resisting uniformity and celebrating the beauty of being different. I was there on the opening night, 12 December, to celebrate this selection with the other artists and our curator.

About Sestante Art Gallery

In the heart of Cascais, Sestante Art Gallery is a space for dialogue, experimentation and contemporary art, which I admire for its modern architecture and its ecological commitment: eco-designed building, solar energy and a self-sufficient water system. A place where creativity and respect for nature go hand in hand.

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See you soon,

Lenon B

Contemporary painter, Ericeira, Portugal