Vanitas – 2026.04.09

The Rui Cunha Foundation opens today, Thursday, April 9th at 6:30pm, the Joint Photography and Art Exhibition “VANITAS – Reflections on Transience and Legacy”, featuring photography, poetry and traditional Chinese painting by various artists, evoking themes such as sorrow, longing, and the transience of life.

Through photography, six artists from Macau – Carmen Serejo, Gonçalo Lobo Pinheiro, Francisco Ricarte, João Palla, Sara Augusto and Shee Va – explore the concept of VANITAS, which symbolizes the impermanence of life, the futility of pleasure and the inevitability of death. This exercise serves as a reminder how ambition and earthly desires are transient.

As amateur photographers, they observe the tomb of poet Camilo Pessanha in Macau; they interpret the impermanence of Egyptian rites of death in a recent exhibition; they stress the relevance of Santa Cruz Cemetery in East Timor, due to the sadness of lost lives and as a symbol of national identity; they highlight the presence of religious structures and votive symbols within Macau’s temples and shrines; and they focus on the presence of earthly and aesthetic manifestations of Catholic rituals in the Prazeres Cemetery in Lisbon, according to the organizers.

The artists of the Macau Belt and Road Calligraphy and Painting Culture Arts Association also explore the concept of VANITAS in art, as «a form of allegorical expression that seeks to represent a higher ideal. This art genre was initially developed by Dutch painters in the 17th century during the Baroque Period, and kept being revisited in Western and Eastern painting.

This exhibition also aims to celebrate poetry to express VANITAS, being contemporary with the launch of the book “A Oriente do Silêncio e outros Poemas”, by Rui Rocha, which will be the subject of a specific event dedicated to this work, on April 13th, and where A Poetics of Death is introduced, a Chinese tradition originating in Chan (Zen) Buddhism.

The artworks will be on display until April 18th, 2026.

Admission is free.
Don’t miss it!
For Macau, Further and Higher!

 

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FRC | Exposição fotográfica e de poesia VANITAS | Telejornal da TDM – Canal de Macau de 09.04.2026

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