Awakening, Tivoli - Avenida de Liberdade,

Lisbon, Portugal

March 12th - August 31st, 2026

AWAKENING is an installation born from the crossover between art, science and memory, evoking our deep connection to the botanical world and its fragile forms. Drawing on archival herbaria, field research and the Red List of Threatened Species, visual artist Weronika Anna Rosa transforms flora species at risk of extinction into monumental silhouettes, amplified beyond the scale of the human body. Suspended in the lobby and the main entrance of Tivoli Avenida Liberdade, the plant figures become chimerical presences, at once delicate and striking, evoking a renewed attention to what usually goes unnoticed.

Far from being only a mediation on loss, AWAKENING emerges as a celebration of life in all its essence, a tribute to the persistence of living beings and their resilience. By observing, sketching and painting these plants, the artist brings forth a gesture of care: documenting, remembering, sharing. At Tivoli Avenida Liberdade, the fabric canvas convert this space into a place of sensory intersection, where those who cross are enveloped by a garden of shadows and colours, between the memory of an herbarium and the physical experience between walking among plants of nearly architectonic scale.

THE PROJECT AND THE MATERIALS

Inspired by the architecture of Tivoli Avenida Liberdade, Weronika Anna Rosa presents her largest-scale work to date, conceived specifically for the Muxarabi: a painting on fabric entitled Geranium Languinosum (550 x 220 cm), a species classified as ‘regionally extinct’, now absent from the natural environment in Portugal. The enlarged silhouette of this plant rises above a fabric with irregular weaves, evoking a once-living presence.

In the hotel lobby and main entrance, other suspended paintings form an engaging journey around the species Veratrum album, Alchemilla transiens, Viola hirta, Berula erecta, Vallisneria spiralis, Aconitum napellus, Epipactis palustris and Sagittaria sagittifolia. Arranged at different heights in two different sizes (280 x 180 cm and 220 x 130 cm), these form a floating garden of plant contours, whose density can be adjusted according to the dynamics of the space.

At the entrance to the lobby, an oak structure (130 x 220 x 20 cm) incorporates two paintings on fabric that filter the light and amplify the logic of transparency between forms, functioning as a threshold between the outdoors and the main exhibition space.

The Portuguese organic cotton fabric, chosen by the artist in two variants, with different weaves and degrees of transparency, favours lightness and permeability to light, allowing the plant silhouettes to gain depth through subtle overlaps. The monochromatic and natural palette refers to palaeobotanical fossils, suggesting absence, fragility and the passage of time.

TIVOLI ART COLLECTION – MAKE ROOM FOR MASTERPIECES

With AWAKENING, Tivoli Avenida Liberdade continues its cycle of temporary exhibitions, transforming the lobby in a space of dialogue with contemporary art. The Tivoli Art Collection – Make Room for Masterpieces project, which began in 2022 with SUPERFLORA by Márcio Vilela, presented many other exhibits, among which we find the tapestries by Esther Mahlangu (2023), ILLUSION OF CLAY by AKACORLEONE, GOLDEN HOUR by Ana Trancoso and GYÖRGY’S DREAM by Jorge Feijão.

Between 2011 and 2016, the hotel hosted over 14 exhibitions with names as Pedro Barateiro, Conceição Abreu and Pedro Calapez. After October 2022, Tivoli reclaimed its rightful place in Lisbon’s cultural scene with a manifesto supporting the arts that proposes site-specific interventions conceived to interact with the unique architecture of the hotel.