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Thirty-two Texts Concerning Different Spaces, 2026
Text-based single-channel 4K video, 31 minutes, colour, sound
A text-based moving-image work composed of thirty-two of my written reflections on encountering public space through a multitude of forms — physically, in films, in books, in imagination. The texts are factual, fictional and speculative; they map out ways of being in public spaces while referencing a sense of sadness and loss of community I encountered whilst researching visual documentation related to urban regeneration in Glasgow during the 1960s and 1970s. Commissioned by Many Studios, Glasgow.
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Text-based single-channel 4K video, 31 minutes, colour, sound
A text-based moving-image work composed of thirty-two of my written reflections on encountering public space through a multitude of forms — physically, in films, in books, in imagination. The texts are factual, fictional and speculative; they map out ways of being in public spaces while referencing a sense of sadness and loss of community I encountered whilst researching visual documentation related to urban regeneration in Glasgow during the 1960s and 1970s. Commissioned by Many Studios, Glasgow.
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Inside and Around Institutions and Looking Outside, 2026
Two-channel 4K video, 9 min., colour, sound
A fragmentary work that originates from probing my emotional relationship to place and memory of place. It is composed of footage and photography I made between 2019 and 2026 in the vicinity of institutional buildings of historical, cultural or religious significance — in Lisbon, Sintra, Évora, Geneva, Glasgow, Istanbul, Mindelo (Cape Verde) and Vilnius. By picturing details of artefacts from their collections as well as the outside of the institutions from inside, often through glass, the work focuses on the play between what sits inside the institutions and their surrounding spatial and environmental contexts.
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Two-channel 4K video, 9 min., colour, sound
A fragmentary work that originates from probing my emotional relationship to place and memory of place. It is composed of footage and photography I made between 2019 and 2026 in the vicinity of institutional buildings of historical, cultural or religious significance — in Lisbon, Sintra, Évora, Geneva, Glasgow, Istanbul, Mindelo (Cape Verde) and Vilnius. By picturing details of artefacts from their collections as well as the outside of the institutions from inside, often through glass, the work focuses on the play between what sits inside the institutions and their surrounding spatial and environmental contexts.
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Artist in Her Studio, 2025
2 synchronised monitors, MiniDV transferred to 4K, 16:9, 8 minutes 30 seconds, colour, sound
Footage of the Portuguese and Cape Verdean visual artist Luísa Queirós in her studio, filmed in 2009 while I was living in Mindelo, Cape Verde. Born in Portugal, she moved to Cape Verde shortly before independence in 1975 and died there in 2017. Throughout her career, she publicly opposed cultural policies she considered short-sighted. She was in between worlds, describing herself as Portuguese by birth and Cape Verdean at heart. It has been documented that at times she spoke of disillusionment and of the desire to forego life.
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2 synchronised monitors, MiniDV transferred to 4K, 16:9, 8 minutes 30 seconds, colour, sound
Footage of the Portuguese and Cape Verdean visual artist Luísa Queirós in her studio, filmed in 2009 while I was living in Mindelo, Cape Verde. Born in Portugal, she moved to Cape Verde shortly before independence in 1975 and died there in 2017. Throughout her career, she publicly opposed cultural policies she considered short-sighted. She was in between worlds, describing herself as Portuguese by birth and Cape Verdean at heart. It has been documented that at times she spoke of disillusionment and of the desire to forego life.
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Plausible Exhibitions, 2025
Digital print on paper, dimensions variable
A series of digital images, each taking the form of an exhibition advertisement: a posthumous exhibition by a Lusophone historical figure from the turbulent end-of-colonisation period, hosted at a fictitious gallery or institute on a fictitious street. Details in the advert — the exhibiting artist, the host institution, the location — make reference to a different node in the Lusophone late-colonial political context.
Digital print on paper, dimensions variable
A series of digital images, each taking the form of an exhibition advertisement: a posthumous exhibition by a Lusophone historical figure from the turbulent end-of-colonisation period, hosted at a fictitious gallery or institute on a fictitious street. Details in the advert — the exhibiting artist, the host institution, the location — make reference to a different node in the Lusophone late-colonial political context.
MÍ / EU / I, 2024
Digital 4K file, 4:3, 12 minutes and 21 seconds, sound
In my quotidian I speak Cape Verdean Creole, from the place where I was born, Portuguese from where I grew up in Lisbon, and English from where I have been living for most of my adult life. Mí in Cape Verdean Creole, Eu in Portuguese, I in English — three first-person pronouns of equal meaning, but each one I invest with a different emotional relationship to its language. Alongside this, Mí, Eu and I embody the nature of the colonial relationships between Cape Verde, Portugal — and its ‘subaltern colonialism’ — and British colonialism.
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Digital 4K file, 4:3, 12 minutes and 21 seconds, sound
In my quotidian I speak Cape Verdean Creole, from the place where I was born, Portuguese from where I grew up in Lisbon, and English from where I have been living for most of my adult life. Mí in Cape Verdean Creole, Eu in Portuguese, I in English — three first-person pronouns of equal meaning, but each one I invest with a different emotional relationship to its language. Alongside this, Mí, Eu and I embody the nature of the colonial relationships between Cape Verde, Portugal — and its ‘subaltern colonialism’ — and British colonialism.
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The Process of Feeling ‘I Love the Black in Me’, 2024
Digital 4K file, 4:3, 4 minutes and 9 seconds, sound
Over 1,000 drawings displayed in succession, in which entities — including the letters that form part of the phrase 'I love the Black in me' — crudely devour and merge with one another to produce new entities, which then perpetuate the cycle. This makes reference to a complex and ongoing process of reframing and confronting the internalisation of biases that erode one's own selfhood.
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Digital 4K file, 4:3, 4 minutes and 9 seconds, sound
Over 1,000 drawings displayed in succession, in which entities — including the letters that form part of the phrase 'I love the Black in me' — crudely devour and merge with one another to produce new entities, which then perpetuate the cycle. This makes reference to a complex and ongoing process of reframing and confronting the internalisation of biases that erode one's own selfhood.
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Individual Simultaneously Self-Caressing and Self-punishing, 2023
HD file, 16:9, 9 minutes and 53 seconds, sound
A character caresses one side of his face with one hand while violently slapping and punching the other side with the other, accompanied by a soundtrack of people cheering him on. The footage, which has been manipulated, is a recording of a video performance I made in 2006. The work is cathartic in nature, playing on the relationship between compliance with and rejection of social discourses.
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HD file, 16:9, 9 minutes and 53 seconds, sound
A character caresses one side of his face with one hand while violently slapping and punching the other side with the other, accompanied by a soundtrack of people cheering him on. The footage, which has been manipulated, is a recording of a video performance I made in 2006. The work is cathartic in nature, playing on the relationship between compliance with and rejection of social discourses.
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Representation of an Outsider with Sounds from Popular Voices and Songs, 2023
Digital HD file, 4:3, 20 minutes and 19 seconds, sound
A photograph of myself taken three years after my family and I moved from Cape Verde to Lisbon undergoes a process of slow disfiguration into something monstrous. The soundtrack layers manipulated audio from songs by Cape Verdean diaspora musicians with partly imperceptible extracts of dialogue from Portuguese and English colonialist films. As a child I remember not being immune to a pervasive racism that affected Portuguese society, then still untangling itself from its colonial past.
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Digital HD file, 4:3, 20 minutes and 19 seconds, sound
A photograph of myself taken three years after my family and I moved from Cape Verde to Lisbon undergoes a process of slow disfiguration into something monstrous. The soundtrack layers manipulated audio from songs by Cape Verdean diaspora musicians with partly imperceptible extracts of dialogue from Portuguese and English colonialist films. As a child I remember not being immune to a pervasive racism that affected Portuguese society, then still untangling itself from its colonial past.
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Monster’s Walk in Ten Chapters (Version III), 2022 and 2025
Digital 4K file, 4:3, 39 minutes and 39 seconds, sound
A melancholic creature — a monster I performed in costume — arrives in a small rural town and moves through the different types of public spaces that characterise it, as if searching for something or someone, and eventually leaves. The tonality of space changes gradually from colour to dense black-and-white as the monster enters the built environment, where he fluctuates between being visually discernible and indiscernible. Alongside the process of walking, a fairytale of tragic love between a princess and a monster, peppered with colonialist undertones, is narrated through voice.
This is a re-edited version of the work that emerged from a residency I undertook at Deveron Projects in Huntly, Scotland. The fairytale pays homage to the fantasy literature of Huntly-born writer and clergyman George MacDonald (1824–1905).
Original credits: Written, directed and performed by Irineu Destourelles. Narration by Maureen Ross. Costume Designer: Zephyr Liddell. Costume Maker: Emily Smit-Dicks. Director of Photography, Editor and Colourist: Daniel Hughes. Sound Recordist and Mixer: Mark Readhead. Story Editor: Lavendhri Arumugam. Assistants: Anita Krasowska and Zuzana Fryntova. Produced by Deveron Projects, a Culture Collective project funded through Creative Scotland.
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Digital 4K file, 4:3, 39 minutes and 39 seconds, sound
A melancholic creature — a monster I performed in costume — arrives in a small rural town and moves through the different types of public spaces that characterise it, as if searching for something or someone, and eventually leaves. The tonality of space changes gradually from colour to dense black-and-white as the monster enters the built environment, where he fluctuates between being visually discernible and indiscernible. Alongside the process of walking, a fairytale of tragic love between a princess and a monster, peppered with colonialist undertones, is narrated through voice.
This is a re-edited version of the work that emerged from a residency I undertook at Deveron Projects in Huntly, Scotland. The fairytale pays homage to the fantasy literature of Huntly-born writer and clergyman George MacDonald (1824–1905).
Original credits: Written, directed and performed by Irineu Destourelles. Narration by Maureen Ross. Costume Designer: Zephyr Liddell. Costume Maker: Emily Smit-Dicks. Director of Photography, Editor and Colourist: Daniel Hughes. Sound Recordist and Mixer: Mark Readhead. Story Editor: Lavendhri Arumugam. Assistants: Anita Krasowska and Zuzana Fryntova. Produced by Deveron Projects, a Culture Collective project funded through Creative Scotland.
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Salazar Quotes Translated into a Personal Creole, 2020
Digital print on paper, dimensions variable
A series of digital images with well-known maxims attributed to António de Oliveira Salazar — the Portuguese dictator who pursued an ultra-colonialist policy from 1932 to 1968 — translated into Cape Verdean Creole and laid over photographs I took in everyday Cape Verdean contexts.
Digital print on paper, dimensions variable
A series of digital images with well-known maxims attributed to António de Oliveira Salazar — the Portuguese dictator who pursued an ultra-colonialist policy from 1932 to 1968 — translated into Cape Verdean Creole and laid over photographs I took in everyday Cape Verdean contexts.
Ex-colonial Landscape with Different Filters, 2019
MiniDV transferred to digital HD file, 4:3, 4 minutes and 30 seconds, silent
Manipulated footage of a landscape from my native island of Santo Antão, Cape Verde, runs alongside text intertwining two sources: lyrics from 1980s and 1990s Portuguese pop songs, and excerpts from speeches by the leaders of MPLA and UNITA, the opposing factions in the Angolan civil war. Growing up in Lisbon after the end of a long and ‘ultra-colonialist’ dictatorship, Portuguese pop culture projected a new Portugal into Europe and into the future, while the civil wars taking place in the former African colonies kept the past in the present.
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MiniDV transferred to digital HD file, 4:3, 4 minutes and 30 seconds, silent
Manipulated footage of a landscape from my native island of Santo Antão, Cape Verde, runs alongside text intertwining two sources: lyrics from 1980s and 1990s Portuguese pop songs, and excerpts from speeches by the leaders of MPLA and UNITA, the opposing factions in the Angolan civil war. Growing up in Lisbon after the end of a long and ‘ultra-colonialist’ dictatorship, Portuguese pop culture projected a new Portugal into Europe and into the future, while the civil wars taking place in the former African colonies kept the past in the present.
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Supernatural Forces, Mental Health and Detail from Indoors/
Forças Sobrenaturais, Doença Mental e Detalhe de Interior, 2019
HD file, 16:9, 11 minutes and 18 seconds, silent
A text in English and Portuguese runs over low-opacity footage of a bouquet of artificial flowers — the same flowers that adorned my parents’ living room in my childhood, where Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese cultural codes intertwined. A narrator juxtaposes social attitudes toward mental health and the state of democracy in Cape Verde whilst erroneously attributing details from Portuguese postcolonial history to Cape Verde. The two language versions were written simultaneously but are not literal translations of each other: the English is more rational and the Portuguese more emotional, which attests to my different emotional relationship to both.
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Forças Sobrenaturais, Doença Mental e Detalhe de Interior, 2019
HD file, 16:9, 11 minutes and 18 seconds, silent
A text in English and Portuguese runs over low-opacity footage of a bouquet of artificial flowers — the same flowers that adorned my parents’ living room in my childhood, where Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese cultural codes intertwined. A narrator juxtaposes social attitudes toward mental health and the state of democracy in Cape Verde whilst erroneously attributing details from Portuguese postcolonial history to Cape Verde. The two language versions were written simultaneously but are not literal translations of each other: the English is more rational and the Portuguese more emotional, which attests to my different emotional relationship to both.
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Several Ways of Falling Ordered Differently, 2019
Digital HD file, 16:9, 4 minutes and 8 seconds, silent
Thirty-five sequences in which I fall 'helplessly' to the ground in my father's vegetable plot on the outskirts of Lisbon, where he grows the same tropical vegetables he grew in Cape Verde before leaving for Europe. Each sequence includes the same shots, arranged in a different order.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 4 minutes and 8 seconds, silent
Thirty-five sequences in which I fall 'helplessly' to the ground in my father's vegetable plot on the outskirts of Lisbon, where he grows the same tropical vegetables he grew in Cape Verde before leaving for Europe. Each sequence includes the same shots, arranged in a different order.
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One Hundred and Two Houses on Fire, 2019
Digital HD file, 16:9, 9 minutes and 43 seconds, silent
A series of one hundred and two drawings of geometric houses, displayed one after another, each consumed by fire from the inside. What most threatens these linear and often solid structures emerges from inside them.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 9 minutes and 43 seconds, silent
A series of one hundred and two drawings of geometric houses, displayed one after another, each consumed by fire from the inside. What most threatens these linear and often solid structures emerges from inside them.
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Unevenly Spaced and Censored Anonymous Undergraduate Essay and Love for Gardens, 2018
Digital HD file, 16:9, 13 minutes and 55 seconds, sound
An essay on the critical reception of artworks by Black visual artists, displayed with aleatory and uneven spacing between words. I commissioned the essay from an online essay-mill, specifying its title, writing level, and reference texts. Behind the text, a darkened background partially conceals a geometric abstract painting I made in 1999, hanging in an art collector’s living room in Lisbon.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 13 minutes and 55 seconds, sound
An essay on the critical reception of artworks by Black visual artists, displayed with aleatory and uneven spacing between words. I commissioned the essay from an online essay-mill, specifying its title, writing level, and reference texts. Behind the text, a darkened background partially conceals a geometric abstract painting I made in 1999, hanging in an art collector’s living room in Lisbon.
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White Balance Error and Subject with Straight Long Hair, 2017
Digital HD file, 16:9, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, b&w, sound
Using a camera with its white balance left uncalibrated, I focus on a woman’s face in extreme close-up as she performs a sequence of gestures. She enacts a familiar beauty ritual, then undoes everything she has just done, as if negating the conventions placed on her beyond the camera.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, b&w, sound
Using a camera with its white balance left uncalibrated, I focus on a woman’s face in extreme close-up as she performs a sequence of gestures. She enacts a familiar beauty ritual, then undoes everything she has just done, as if negating the conventions placed on her beyond the camera.
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Glossary of Political Words, 2017
Digital HD file, 16:9, 35 minutes and 39 seconds, silent
Alternative meanings, often sardonic and suggestive of social Darwinism and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, are attributed to words commonly found in a glossary of political words. They reflect on political discourses gaining strength in the public domain in the UK whilst looking back at 1960s Portuguese colonialist discourse. The Portuguese regime was then accused of "verbal luxury", of constructing a colonial representation different from reality. Similarly, these political concepts, predominantly integral to democratic life, are defined through socially divisive practices.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 35 minutes and 39 seconds, silent
Alternative meanings, often sardonic and suggestive of social Darwinism and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, are attributed to words commonly found in a glossary of political words. They reflect on political discourses gaining strength in the public domain in the UK whilst looking back at 1960s Portuguese colonialist discourse. The Portuguese regime was then accused of "verbal luxury", of constructing a colonial representation different from reality. Similarly, these political concepts, predominantly integral to democratic life, are defined through socially divisive practices.
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Parsing – Halves of an Essay, with Blank Spaces and Mistakes, Running in Simultaneous, 2016
Digital HD file from original text, 16:9, 13 minutes and 22 seconds, silent
An essay I wrote whilst living in Greenwich, London, on James VI of Scotland / I of England and his son Charles I, and their relationships to power, is shown divided into halves that run simultaneously, with words that denote social status, place, and time redacted. Both kings held court in Greenwich. Charles I's pursuit of absolute power and opulence at a time of scarcity contributed to his downfall and beheading at the hands of his subjects. Stripped of specific details, the text references any pursuit of absolute power while the simultaneous halves acknowledge that multiple dynamics unfold simultaneously.
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Digital HD file from original text, 16:9, 13 minutes and 22 seconds, silent
An essay I wrote whilst living in Greenwich, London, on James VI of Scotland / I of England and his son Charles I, and their relationships to power, is shown divided into halves that run simultaneously, with words that denote social status, place, and time redacted. Both kings held court in Greenwich. Charles I's pursuit of absolute power and opulence at a time of scarcity contributed to his downfall and beheading at the hands of his subjects. Stripped of specific details, the text references any pursuit of absolute power while the simultaneous halves acknowledge that multiple dynamics unfold simultaneously.
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Twenty-Five Profiles, 2015
Digital HD file from found text, 16:9, 11 minutes and 55 seconds, silent
Phrases appropriated from the profile descriptions of female porn actors on a website specialising in white-female / black-male interracial content, with their sexually explicit words or expressions and racist tropes replaced by underscores The genre relies on colonial-era racist tropes and redacting the explicit content lets those tropes emerge through inference.
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Digital HD file from found text, 16:9, 11 minutes and 55 seconds, silent
Phrases appropriated from the profile descriptions of female porn actors on a website specialising in white-female / black-male interracial content, with their sexually explicit words or expressions and racist tropes replaced by underscores The genre relies on colonial-era racist tropes and redacting the explicit content lets those tropes emerge through inference.
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New Words for Mindelo’s Urban Creole, 2014
Digital HD file, 16:9, 10 minutes and 26 seconds, sound
A series of neologisms created for the substratum Creole of Cape Verde, displayed one at a time. Cape Verde is a bilingual country where Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese are both spoken; the new Creole words — coined from the names of Portuguese colonial administrators and figures from Greek mythology — enrich Mindelo's spoken Creole with concepts that have no single-word equivalent in Creole, though they often do in Portuguese. Their proposed meanings draw parallels between the country's colonial past and the social dynamics that have shaped it since Cape Verde's integration into the global market economy in the 1990s.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 10 minutes and 26 seconds, sound
A series of neologisms created for the substratum Creole of Cape Verde, displayed one at a time. Cape Verde is a bilingual country where Cape Verdean Creole and Portuguese are both spoken; the new Creole words — coined from the names of Portuguese colonial administrators and figures from Greek mythology — enrich Mindelo's spoken Creole with concepts that have no single-word equivalent in Creole, though they often do in Portuguese. Their proposed meanings draw parallels between the country's colonial past and the social dynamics that have shaped it since Cape Verde's integration into the global market economy in the 1990s.
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Metathesiophobia (or the Abnormal Fear of Change), 2011
Digital HD file, 16:9, 100 minutes and 54 seconds, sound
A cropped, long single-shot of three figures seated at a table, packing a white powdery substance into sachets, accompanied by an off-screen voiceover. The voiceover was made by cutting an audio extract of René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) into sentences and reassembling them aleatorily; with time, the voice-over reveals itself to be incoherent, while the characters labour throughout.
Performed by Elisabete Gonçalves, Zenaida Alfama Medina, and Irineu Destourelles. Camera: Luís Carlos Fontes de Alencar Filho and Mamadou Diop. Direct sound: David Medina.
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Digital HD file, 16:9, 100 minutes and 54 seconds, sound
A cropped, long single-shot of three figures seated at a table, packing a white powdery substance into sachets, accompanied by an off-screen voiceover. The voiceover was made by cutting an audio extract of René Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) into sentences and reassembling them aleatorily; with time, the voice-over reveals itself to be incoherent, while the characters labour throughout.
Performed by Elisabete Gonçalves, Zenaida Alfama Medina, and Irineu Destourelles. Camera: Luís Carlos Fontes de Alencar Filho and Mamadou Diop. Direct sound: David Medina.
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Irineu Destourelles
mail@irineudestourelles.com
Born in Santo Antão, Cape Verde and currently based in Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Education
PhD Film Studies - UCL (University College London)
MA Fine Art - Central St. Martins London
BA Fine Art - WdKA Rotterdam
Solo Exhibitions
2026 Faint Light of the World with Contradictions, Glasgow International, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2026 Thirty-two Texts with Distress, Gorbals Public Library, Glasgow
2023 Passargada, Mindelo Maritime Station, Mindelo Cultural Center and The Mindelo Tower (CNAD-National Centre for Arts, Crafts and Design, Mindelo), Mindelo, Cape Verde
2022 Videos and Texts, TOPIC—Espace d'Arte Independant, Geneva, Switzerland
2020 A Batida Que Faz-te Sujo (The Beat That Makes You Dirty), CAPC - Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
2019 Subtitulizar/Subtitling, Center of Modern Art Gulbenkian (CAM), Lisbon, Portugal
2017 Tainted Verbal, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2017 Unturning, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2014 Autoestrangeirismo, Atelier Concorde, Lisbon, Portugal
2011 Thinking According to Rectangular Images, Portuguese Institute - Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
Group Exhibitions
2025 Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA and later in 2025 at MACBA, Barcelona
2025 Simenti di Onti na Txon di Manhan (2025), CNAD, Mindelo, Cape Verde 2025
2024 Atlanticities (Cape Verdean Pavilion, 2024) Dak'Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal
2023 Sol Sal Brilho Brilhas, Espaço Vaga, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal
2021 O Silêncio da Terra, Galeria do Paço, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
2020 History as Fiction, Fiction as History, Hangar Online [Hangar, Lisbon]
2019 Apa Kabar? (What's new?), Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2019 South-South: Between Land and Sea Film Programme, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 Another Country, Alice R. Rogers & Target Galleries, St John’s Art Centre, Minnesota, USA. Travelled to City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2019
2017 A Glimmer of Freedom (Apexart, New York), Tarrafal Concentration Camp, Santiago, Cape Verde
2016 Being and Becoming: Complexities of the African Identity, UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
2015 Customer Experience, Special Projects, VI Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia
2015 Sex Macht Gut/ Sex Does Good, Sprechsaal, Berlin, Germany
2014 Ilha de São Jorge, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore island, Venice, Italy. Exhibition also included in Rencontres de Bamako Biennale (10th edition), Mémorial Modibo Keïta, Bamako, Mali, 2015
2013 Southern Panoramas, Videobrasil 18, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil [irdc]
2013 Escena Caboverdiana, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain [irdc]
2011 Variavel Diferencial, Torre do Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
2010 Processo, Centro Cultural do Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
Group screenings/ Festivals
2023 Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland, UK
2018 AfroScots: Glasgow School of Art, Scotland; and Edinburgh School of Art, Scotland, UK
2017 Áfricas Utópicas (selected works from the Associação Cultural Videobrasil Collection), Espaço Transversal da ArtRio 2017, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [irdc]
2017 Bomb Factory Artist Film Festival IV, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, England, UK
2017 AfroScots, Galerie de l'Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
2015 Ilha de Sao Jorge, Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy and ICA London’s Artists' Film Club, England
2015 Capture All, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany
Residencies
2022 Deveron Projects, Huntly, Scotland, UK
2021 Alkanta Festival, Lisbon Portugal
2015 Hangar, Lisbon, Portugal
Published writing and works
- Irineu Destourelles, Plausible Exhibitions, Umbigo, Lisbon 2025, pp. 114-118
- Irineu Destourelles, Citações do Antigo Presidente do Conselho de Ministros Traduzidas para Um Crioulo Pessoal, in Língua-Lugar: Literatura História Estudos Culturais (N.02, December, 2020) Université de Genève and Universität Zürich
- Irineu Rocha (AKA Irineu Destourelles), Carlos Schofied (1944-2012) Notes from the Year Before Last [Port /Eng] in 'Ilha de Sao Jorge', Beyond Entrophy, London 2014, pp43-54
- Irineu Rocha (AKA Irineu Destourelles ), Perímetro < Diâmetro: Geometrização, Creolização, Corpos, e Aglutinaçoes [Port/ Spa/ Fren] in 'Horizontes Insulares', Gobierno de Canarias, Las Palmas, pp. 200-217
Publications (selected)
- Ana Nolasco, 'Diasporic Bodies: The Video Art of Irineu Destourelles' in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, V. 52 (2023), pp. 84-95.
- Ana Balona de Oliveira, 'Decolonial Imagination and the Unmaking of (Post)Colonial Cities and Tongues: History, Memory, and Futurity in the Work of Angolan, Mozambican, São Tome, Cabo Verdean, and Portuguese Contemporary Artists ' in PLCS, 36-37 (2022) pp. 217-256.
- Alvaro Luis Lima, A House of Fire: the Diaspora of Irineu Destourelles, in Atlantica: Contemporary Art From Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome e Principe and their Diasporas, Hangar Books, Lisboa (2021) pp. 74-86.
- Claudia Sobral, Se o fantasma de João de Sá Panasco Vagueasse por Lisboa, Semanario O Novo, Lisbon (19.11.2021), pp. 60-61.
- Rita Fabiana, I am not here. I am here Notes on an accidental body-place, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2019)
- Neil Cooper, Irineu Destourelles – Unturning, productmagazine.co.uk (2017)
- Ana Nolasco, Entrevista com Irineu Destourelles:Verifebura: Prática Colonial e Consciência Pós-colonial, Buala (2015)
Talks/ Panel Discussions/ Symposiums
2021 artist talk with Sofia L. Borges, TOPIC/PICTO — Espace de Production Artistique, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 artist presentation, The Decolonial Artist (17/05/21), Universidade de Geneva, Geneva
2019 artist talk, Irineu Destourelles and Ângela Ferreira, International Meetings Where I (we) Stand, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 artists presentation and panel discussion, Collective Blackness (artist presentations organised by Black Radical Imagination and LUX Scotland), Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 presentation, A Glimmer of Freedom (research seminar) CITCEM - Transdisciplinar Investigation Centre, University of Porto, Portugal
2017 artist talk with Neil Cooper and Holly Knox Yeoman with Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 artist talk with with Tiffany Boyle (Mother Tongue), Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2015 artist talk with Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy
2015 artist presentation and talk with Ana Balona de Oliveira and Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Hangar Artistic Research Center, Lisbon, Portugal
2013 artists talk with Tchale Figueira, Leao Lopes and Orlando Britto Jinorio, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain
2011 panel discussions co-chair with Rita Lobo, Mindelo, Do We Have Culture? Series of Public Meetings, Various Venues across Mindelo, Cape Verde
mail@irineudestourelles.com
Born in Santo Antão, Cape Verde and currently based in Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Education
PhD Film Studies - UCL (University College London)
MA Fine Art - Central St. Martins London
BA Fine Art - WdKA Rotterdam
Solo Exhibitions
2026 Faint Light of the World with Contradictions, Glasgow International, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2026 Thirty-two Texts with Distress, Gorbals Public Library, Glasgow
2023 Passargada, Mindelo Maritime Station, Mindelo Cultural Center and The Mindelo Tower (CNAD-National Centre for Arts, Crafts and Design, Mindelo), Mindelo, Cape Verde
2022 Videos and Texts, TOPIC—Espace d'Arte Independant, Geneva, Switzerland
2020 A Batida Que Faz-te Sujo (The Beat That Makes You Dirty), CAPC - Círculo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
2019 Subtitulizar/Subtitling, Center of Modern Art Gulbenkian (CAM), Lisbon, Portugal
2017 Tainted Verbal, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2017 Unturning, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2014 Autoestrangeirismo, Atelier Concorde, Lisbon, Portugal
2011 Thinking According to Rectangular Images, Portuguese Institute - Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
Group Exhibitions
2025 Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA and later in 2025 at MACBA, Barcelona
2025 Simenti di Onti na Txon di Manhan (2025), CNAD, Mindelo, Cape Verde 2025
2024 Atlanticities (Cape Verdean Pavilion, 2024) Dak'Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal
2023 Sol Sal Brilho Brilhas, Espaço Vaga, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal
2021 O Silêncio da Terra, Galeria do Paço, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal
2020 History as Fiction, Fiction as History, Hangar Online [Hangar, Lisbon]
2019 Apa Kabar? (What's new?), Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2019 South-South: Between Land and Sea Film Programme, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2018 Another Country, Alice R. Rogers & Target Galleries, St John’s Art Centre, Minnesota, USA. Travelled to City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2019
2017 A Glimmer of Freedom (Apexart, New York), Tarrafal Concentration Camp, Santiago, Cape Verde
2016 Being and Becoming: Complexities of the African Identity, UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
2015 Customer Experience, Special Projects, VI Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia
2015 Sex Macht Gut/ Sex Does Good, Sprechsaal, Berlin, Germany
2014 Ilha de São Jorge, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore island, Venice, Italy. Exhibition also included in Rencontres de Bamako Biennale (10th edition), Mémorial Modibo Keïta, Bamako, Mali, 2015
2013 Southern Panoramas, Videobrasil 18, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil [irdc]
2013 Escena Caboverdiana, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain [irdc]
2011 Variavel Diferencial, Torre do Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
2010 Processo, Centro Cultural do Mindelo, Mindelo, Cape Verde [irdc]
Group screenings/ Festivals
2023 Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick, Scotland, UK
2018 AfroScots: Glasgow School of Art, Scotland; and Edinburgh School of Art, Scotland, UK
2017 Áfricas Utópicas (selected works from the Associação Cultural Videobrasil Collection), Espaço Transversal da ArtRio 2017, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [irdc]
2017 Bomb Factory Artist Film Festival IV, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, England, UK
2017 AfroScots, Galerie de l'Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
2015 Ilha de Sao Jorge, Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy and ICA London’s Artists' Film Club, England
2015 Capture All, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany
Residencies
2022 Deveron Projects, Huntly, Scotland, UK
2021 Alkanta Festival, Lisbon Portugal
2015 Hangar, Lisbon, Portugal
Published writing and works
- Irineu Destourelles, Plausible Exhibitions, Umbigo, Lisbon 2025, pp. 114-118
- Irineu Destourelles, Citações do Antigo Presidente do Conselho de Ministros Traduzidas para Um Crioulo Pessoal, in Língua-Lugar: Literatura História Estudos Culturais (N.02, December, 2020) Université de Genève and Universität Zürich
- Irineu Rocha (AKA Irineu Destourelles), Carlos Schofied (1944-2012) Notes from the Year Before Last [Port /Eng] in 'Ilha de Sao Jorge', Beyond Entrophy, London 2014, pp43-54
- Irineu Rocha (AKA Irineu Destourelles ), Perímetro < Diâmetro: Geometrização, Creolização, Corpos, e Aglutinaçoes [Port/ Spa/ Fren] in 'Horizontes Insulares', Gobierno de Canarias, Las Palmas, pp. 200-217
Publications (selected)
- Ana Nolasco, 'Diasporic Bodies: The Video Art of Irineu Destourelles' in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, V. 52 (2023), pp. 84-95.
- Ana Balona de Oliveira, 'Decolonial Imagination and the Unmaking of (Post)Colonial Cities and Tongues: History, Memory, and Futurity in the Work of Angolan, Mozambican, São Tome, Cabo Verdean, and Portuguese Contemporary Artists ' in PLCS, 36-37 (2022) pp. 217-256.
- Alvaro Luis Lima, A House of Fire: the Diaspora of Irineu Destourelles, in Atlantica: Contemporary Art From Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome e Principe and their Diasporas, Hangar Books, Lisboa (2021) pp. 74-86.
- Claudia Sobral, Se o fantasma de João de Sá Panasco Vagueasse por Lisboa, Semanario O Novo, Lisbon (19.11.2021), pp. 60-61.
- Rita Fabiana, I am not here. I am here Notes on an accidental body-place, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2019)
- Neil Cooper, Irineu Destourelles – Unturning, productmagazine.co.uk (2017)
- Ana Nolasco, Entrevista com Irineu Destourelles:Verifebura: Prática Colonial e Consciência Pós-colonial, Buala (2015)
Talks/ Panel Discussions/ Symposiums
2021 artist talk with Sofia L. Borges, TOPIC/PICTO — Espace de Production Artistique, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 artist presentation, The Decolonial Artist (17/05/21), Universidade de Geneva, Geneva
2019 artist talk, Irineu Destourelles and Ângela Ferreira, International Meetings Where I (we) Stand, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal
2017 artists presentation and panel discussion, Collective Blackness (artist presentations organised by Black Radical Imagination and LUX Scotland), Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 presentation, A Glimmer of Freedom (research seminar) CITCEM - Transdisciplinar Investigation Centre, University of Porto, Portugal
2017 artist talk with Neil Cooper and Holly Knox Yeoman with Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
2017 artist talk with with Tiffany Boyle (Mother Tongue), Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
2015 artist talk with Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Italy
2015 artist presentation and talk with Ana Balona de Oliveira and Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Hangar Artistic Research Center, Lisbon, Portugal
2013 artists talk with Tchale Figueira, Leao Lopes and Orlando Britto Jinorio, Casa Africa, Las Palmas, Spain
2011 panel discussions co-chair with Rita Lobo, Mindelo, Do We Have Culture? Series of Public Meetings, Various Venues across Mindelo, Cape Verde