At Artissima 2026, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art presents four paintings — O Sótão (The Attic), Refúgio (Refuge), Pé no Mundo (Foot in the World), and Anjo (Angel) — alongside the sculpture Deriva (Drift), all made in 2026.

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The titles seem to offer a few clues: a place where forgotten things accumulate, another where we might seek shelter, the attempt to find a place in the world, a figure belonging simultaneously to the human and the imaginary. These are familiar, almost comforting ideas, yet they carry their own contradictions. The attic holds what we no longer need but cannot bring ourselves to abandon; a refuge implies the existence of a threat; having a foot in the world does not necessarily mean feeling secure within it; and the angel, a figure of protection or hope, belongs to a reality whose existence we cannot confirm.

In the paintings, these ideas are not turned into illustrations. Instead, they become starting points for images that seem to be constantly changing their minds. Cutting, displacing, overlapping, concealing, revealing, and piecing things back together are all part of the process of constructing an image. Collage is no longer simply a technique, but a way of thinking about the instability of things. The way materials meet, interrupt, cover, or replace one another translates how we experience the world today: the speed at which everything happens, our fragmented attention, the relentless accumulation of images and information, and the difficulty of understanding what deserves to remain and what disappears almost immediately.

The paintings become fictional landscapes, subjected to successive alterations, as though they were permanently under construction or undergoing surgery. One image conceals another, a fragment changes the meaning of the whole, what once seemed central becomes secondary. The eye is forced to move, to pause, to begin again. There is a kind of urgency in all of this, but also a desire to resist that very speed through manual work, through a persistent engagement with materials, and through the time required to make and remake.

On the floor, Deriva (Drift) seems to give physical form to the condition suggested by the other titles. It is no longer a question of preserving, seeking shelter, finding a place, or imagining protection, but simply of being adrift. Made from polystyrene and cotton soaked in vinyl glue, the sculpture presents itself as a presence that is difficult to identify, somewhere between a body, clouds, an object, and the remains of something. It looks heavy, yet it is made from lightweight materials.We do not know whether it has fallen, been left behind, or is still in the process of becoming something else. The relationship between painting and sculpture has long been central to Cruz’s practice, but here it finds another way of organising itself. The paintings multiply possibilities, while the sculpture physically occupies the space, as a presence we cannot ignore. Together, they do not seek to explain the world or offer a way out of its contradictions.

Perhaps they come closer to the way we inhabit it: accumulating things, seeking protection, trying to belong, inventing beliefs, and sometimes simply allowing ourselves to drift. There is something profoundly human about this insistence on building, even without knowing exactly why or for how long. Perhaps that is precisely our condition: to keep imagining something while everything around us keeps shifting.

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