The interventions and research in Portugal aim to examine how the sentiment behind the concept conceals the perception of those who were annexed by the Portuguese empire. Beginning in Lisbon, marked by long-established diasporas connected to Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Brazil, brings these distances into close proximity.

As a way to expose the effects of Portuguese curiosidade on their selfhood, food cultures reveal how organised hospitality influences the negotiations on belonging around domestic and public tables. The time spent lingering after a meal invites attention to what happens after production and consumption: the stories, inequalities, solidarities, and forms of knowledge that challenge.

As the residency partner to Lisbon Art Weekend – LAW, one of Sobremesa’s lead beneficiaries – Hangar’s interest in postcolonial and diasporic practice reverses the gaze onto Europe as a method of reconfiguring who is considered to be of the EU. By working with neighbourhoods, archives, gardens, kitchens, and cultural institutions, LAW and Hangar connect historical inquiry with lived experience, thus foregrounding multiple Portugals (existing on the mainland and beyond): remembered, inherited, contested, and continually remade through movement and exchange.