Yuli Yamagata: Where do the sleepwalkers go?

Kunsthalle Lissabon is pleased to present Where Do Sleepwalkers Go?, a solo exhibition by Yuli Yamagata (São Paulo, 1989). The exhibition continues a project initiated at Católica Art Center in October 2025 and results from a collaboration with the School of Arts of Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto.

Known for her hybrid works, Yamagata develops a practice that combines textile materials and techniques to create exuberant volumes that oscillate between the organic and the artificial, the recognizable and the fantastic. Her work draws on references from pop culture, design, and everyday life to construct a visual glossary that is at once playful and unsettling, where humor emerges alongside the uncanny and the familiar is constantly crossed by the unexpected.

In Where Do Sleepwalkers Go?, Yamagata transforms Kunsthalle Lissabon into a dreamlike and immersive environment, proposing an alternative reading of the space. The exhibition unfolds according to a logic close to that of dreams, as a sequence of images in constant metamorphosis, in which forms, scales, and materials challenge perception.

Populating the space, the works spread across the floor and walls, as if overflowing their own boundaries. Fabrics extend beyond their supports, while flowers, recurring throughout the exhibition, sprout from different bodies and objects. They emerge from cerebellums, a baby’s navel, or other unexpected places. Elements emerge from high-heeled shoes, pieces of cheese transform into new forms, and a small television seems to ripple through time and space. At the center of the room, someone sleeps beneath a curtain of cheese, in a scene that could belong to a dream or simply to what happens while bodies sleep.

Without offering linear narratives or fixed interpretations, the exhibition proposes an experience guided by free association, curiosity, and sensory perception. The (de)configuration of forms, materials, and references approaches questions explored by Surrealism and psychoanalysis, in which dreams allow images, desires, and memories to come together beyond conscious logic. At this level, the monster emerges not as a fantastical creature, but as what disrupts the boundaries between the familiar and the strange, the human and the non-human, and what we know and do not yet know how to name. In Yamagata’s universe, these boundaries remain deliberately unstable: unusual situations and improbable associations are presented with a playful, exaggerated dimension, making humor emerge precisely from what can also create a sense of strangeness. It is in this liminal space that dreams escape the limits of sleep.

Kunsthalle Lissabon is supported by the República Portuguesa – Cultura, Juventude e Desporto / Direção-Geral das Artes and the Vasco Collection. The exhibition Where Do Sleepwalkers Go? is supported by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel.

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Yuli Yamagata (São Paulo, 1989) lives and works in her hometown. Her practice combines textile materials, sewing techniques, resins, and everyday objects to create sculptures in which the organic and the artificial, the familiar, and the fantastic intersect. Recent solo exhibitions include: Alô?, Universidade Católica do Porto, Porto, Portugal (2025); Ghosts don’t wear watches, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, United States (2024); Dois pra cá, dois pra lá, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel | Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023); The new, the old and the hole, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, United States (2023). Yamagata has participated in group exhibitions including: Vai, Vai Saudade, MADRE – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy (2024); The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, The Americas Society, New York, United States (2024); Chão da praça: Obras do acervo da Pinacoteca, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); Nunca só essa mente, nunca só esse mundo, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel | Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023); among others.