We're pleased to invite to the opening of Alisa Heil's SOFT POWER, on Sunday, September 13th at 6 PM.

 

Soft Power is an immersive installation where crystal bead curtains, found objects, sound and light come together to create a porous environment for reflection and encounter — drifting away from its original political concept borrowed from cultural diplomacy, it was conceived at a moment when the established geopolitical narratives are being fundamentally reconfigured.

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Alisa Heil (Germany, 1986) is a multidisciplinary artist based between Germany and Portugal. Her practice encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, video, textiles, performance and sensory elements such as sound and scent.

Through immersive environments, she explores subjectivity, desire, memory and the symbolic structures of visual culture by revisiting myths and archetypes. Drawing from folklore, literature and popular culture, her work inhabits the porous territory between fiction and reality, intimacy and collective imaginary.

Heil studied Performance at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, followed by postgraduate studies at Bauhaus University Weimar and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, for which she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship.

Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, performances, screenings and biennials, including Manifesta 11, Zurich; the 12th Havana Biennial; the Marrakech Biennale; Culturgest Porto; the Bienal de Arte Contemporânea da Maia; Palais des Arts, Marseille; and Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin.

Selected solo exhibitions include DIVORCE or how to dance a Damensolo at A Maior, Viseu (2025), Suavissima Pandora at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (2022), Tiresias und der kleine Tod at Espaço Mira, Porto (2022), Spieglein Spieglein at Bombon Projects, Barcelona (2021), Planet der Sirenen at Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto (2020), American Cream at Julius Cæsar Gallery, Chicago (2016) and Presente Invasivo at A Certain Lack of Coherence, Porto (2014).

In 2017, Alisa Heil founded Kunsthalle Freeport, an independent curatorial platform through which she has organized exhibitions and collaborative projects. Within this framework, she also hosts 13 Moons, an ongoing reading programme dedicated to literature, critical theory, and contemporary culture.