Aea: Culture Initiative

10/10/2026

Continuing our curatorial research into modes of coexistence, Aea inaugurates its Second Season at Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu with the exhibition A Thousand Touches: Stories of Migration, Belonging and Connection from the Aea Community.

This exhibition continues the inquiry we began with The Shape of What Remains at Venice Design Biennial 2025. Where the Venice project looked at responses to loss, rupture, and what persists afterwards, A Thousand Touches turns to the next question: how do we get in touch with the world again?

Through the personal stories and artistic practices of three Lisbon-based members of the Aea Community—Ana Borba, Evy Jokhova (Evy Jokhova), and Lisa Smirnova (Lisa Smirnova)—the exhibition highlights the modest, repeated gestures—from shared meals to thousands of stitches—that transform an unfamiliar environment into a shared space of mutual recognition.

Through ordinary acts of making, caring, and connecting, these small everyday gestures repeat and accumulate into relationships, memory, and the fabric of life. 

20 October ’26 – 14 February ’27
Mon – Sun, 8:30 – 17:00
Free admission

Opening: 20 October, 19:00

Location: Aea Space at TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu
Rua Dom Luís I 22, Lisboa

In association with FPC - Museu das Comunicações
Partner: Business Support in Portugal

Cover image: Evy Jokhova Packman’s Journey to Spiritual Enlightenment, fragment, 2022
Photo: Austėja Ščiavinskaitė
Courtesy of the artist and 3 + 1 Arte Contemporânea

04/10/2026

Six months ago, Aea Space was just an a big idea. Today, as we catch our breath between seasons, we’re looking back at how that spot acquired its own rhythm, its own audience, and a community we’re endlessly grateful for.

Behind the smooth openings was a tiny team solving endless puzzles, supported every step of the way by Aea Community members and our very first visitors.

Here’s a little look back at how First Season of Aea Space happened.

P.S. Our walls won’t stay quiet for long. Subscribe to our newsletter by link in bio to hear about Second Season Program of Aea Space first! ✨

16/09/2026

What might survive when the worlds we know are gone?

Artist works across media, drawing on scientific research, ecology, and fiction. His practice explores the fragile relationship between species, knowledge, time, and the worlds that hold them.

For Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces, Rocha Costa presents Livro I (Guardião) (2024). Intervening into the bookshelf at .lisboa , the work invites us to reflect on what–and whose–knowledge might endure once the worlds that produced it have disappeared.

If you haven’t visited Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces at Aea Space inside .lisboa yet, today is your last chance! ⚡️We’re looking forward to seeing you at the exhibition’s finissage.

14/09/2026

Meet Anastasia Belinskaya , an artist exploring materials and processes that extend far beyond human timescales.

In Belinskaya’s works, industrial structures can become fragile and almost alive, while a piece of charcoal can carry the memory of a tree and a much deeper geological past.

Swipe through to explore her practice, and gather with us for the finissage of Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces at Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu on September 16 at 19:00.

Cover photo: Alexis Anaci

12/09/2026

Join us on September 16 at 19:00 as we celebrate two special milestones at once: the finissage of our inaugural exhibition, Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces, and the warm conclusion of the very first season of Aea Space!

It’s been an incredible journey building our first physical home inside TIMS café & padaria, and we want to take this evening to come together, reflect, and share what’s next.

What to expect:
Curatorial Tours: Two guided walkthroughs of the show throughout the evening with curator

In Conversation: An open format to revisit the season, explore Aea’s international community projects, and hear about our upcoming plans.

Drinks & Snacks: Informal gathering with our team and friends.

Come raise a glass with us, wander through the exhibition one last time, and stay for the warm conversations!

📍 Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu
🗓 September 16, 19:00
Registration by link in bio.

See you there!

06/09/2026

Working across media with metaphorically charged materials that echo bodily experiences, .v.rocha explores the tension between physical matter and psycho-emotional states.

Her materials—fragmented, pierced, rearranged, sculpturally reworked—become a way of thinking through the self and the other. They carry an underlying latency that begins on the surface, while themes of mourning and the absurd run quietly through the work, standing in for confrontation, discomfort, and failure.

As an artist, curator, and Artistic Director of Duplex AIR , Rocha brings a deep, research-driven focus to the body and its limits, with work featured in international collections and major award selections.

Her work is currently on view at Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu as part of our Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces exhibition. Make sure to catch it before September 15.

24/07/2026

In a week, part of Aea Space will transform into random t room — ’s ongoing nomadic project, a pop-up tea and coffee room designed as a space for reconnecting with oneself.

Tea and coffee become conduits into a state of care. Aroma, sound, texture, and visuals turn the room into a space that engages every sense.

The room is fluid — more a feeling than an environment. It takes shape around a place and event, absorbs it, and dissolves with it — only to reappear elsewhere, in another form.

Spots are limited, secure yours now.
📍Aea Space at .lisboa
🎟 Tickets by link in bio

18/07/2026

Extending the themes of the exhibition Drifting Signals, Lasting Traces, currently on view at Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu , Practices of Presence is an invitation to slow down and explore communication beyond words and screens.

Join us for a 90-minute event featuring two interactive performances unfolding side by side. Exhibition participant Ines magalhaespresents AGORA, encouraging participants to listen, draw, and create a collaborative artwork through an attentive exploration of sound. She is joined by artist Anya Shekhvatova , who brings her itinerant project random t room to Aea Space for the evening. Through coffee and a carefully composed sensory environment, random t room invites visitors to connect and experience Aea Space through attention, conversation, and exchange.

Open to all ages. All materials are provided.

Thursday, 30 July 2026, 18:00
Where: Aea Space at TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu
Rua Dom Luís I 22, 1200-109 Lisboa
Tickets: General €12, kids €6
Book your place to join the performance via the link in bio.

A multisensory, participatory experience creating a shared space to pause, connect, and practice attention.

20/06/2026

We are continuing our series of conversations with practitioners and creators whose work, values, and vision deeply resonate with our own.

This time we spoke with Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez — founder of the Green Art Lab Alliance Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and the Americas , the Nature Research Department and Future Materials Bank at Jan van Eyck Academie , and author of Let’s Become Fungal: Mycelium Teachings and the Arts — a book that takes the behavior of mycelium as a starting point to explore Indigenous practices and perspectives from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Global North rooted in collaboration, symbiosis, and decentralization. Selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs 2024, the book has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean.

On mycelial networks, non-hierarchical knowledge, unheard voices, and why arts and ecology need more humor and beauty.

11/06/2026

What does it actually take to build something independent? What does it take for fragile forms of collectivity to persist?

At our inaugural public talk at Aea Space inside TIMS • Café & Padaria No Museu , founder of Aea Nata Tatunashvili and architect Andreia Garcia — moderated by , curator of the First Season of the Aea Space Program — traced the fault lines between creative practice, displacement, and the will to build together without the promise of stability.

Although both Nata and Andreia come from architectural backgrounds, their multidisciplinary practices unfold across curating, research, teaching, publishing, and creating new cultural initiatives. Brought together by these shared approaches and a mutual concern for how humans organize themselves across different landscapes, they unpacked the realities of creating under unstable conditions.

Swipe for the key takeaways of “Making Space Together. Creative Practice in Unstable Conditions.”

Photos: Anastasia, photographer // Lisbon