Explore the catalogue of exhibitions

METAMORPHOSES OF PLASTICS: Reality and Multiple approaches

The exhibition “METAMORPHOSES OF PLASTICS: Reality and Multiple approaches” showcases how the first plastics made luxury accessible to everyone. It introduces some of the people and companies that made plastics an essential part of industrial development in Portugal and highlights some of the most significant innovations in Portuguese plastic footwear.

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Inexhaustible Land

Considering footwear as a vehicle for cultural dissemination, the exhibition “Inexhaustible Land” celebrates the richness and diversity of artisanal textile production cultures present in different regions of Portugal and the Lusophone world. These cultures are based on the use of native natural raw materials, transformed locally according to traditional techniques. Curated by Pedro Carvalho de Almeida, the exhibition's purpose has a dual meaning: in addition to the dissemination of tangible and intangible historical heritage, it highlights the creative potential that the deep roots of local textile manufacturing, some at risk of irreversible loss, represent for current socio-economic and cultural contexts.

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Jo Cope. The path is a metaphor

Jo Cope is a British conceptual fashion designer, and her shoes, always red, are tools of social activism. This artist, designer, researcher, and performer works in the limbo between fashion, art, and craft. Her works are reflections on a philosophical path, in search of the deeper meaning of footwear. This was her first international solo exhibition.

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Catalogue Katharina Beilstein

Katharina Beilstein is a German visual artist who mixes, without constraints, sculpture and design.

In 2008, during his first year at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, realizing that his symbolic imagination evoked three-dimensional objects, he decided to dedicate himself to sculpture. In the following years, he studied with the sculptors Georg Herold and Thomas Grünfeld and experimented and tested different materials and techniques.

In 2017, after training with the master shoemaker Rolf Rainer, he began producing sculptural footwear using classic sculpture and footwear materials, such as linden wood and leather, which he contrasts with lacquered surfaces in vibrant colors and metallic elements inspired by futuristic. His shoes, with a simple vamp, wide shape and square toecap, are easily identifiable due to their solid, angular platforms, which give them a very personal look.

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Catalogue René Van Den Berg

René van den Berg is a designer and teacher from the Netherlands, who finds his creativity in technique and a non-conservative and even adventurous way of looking at footwear.

René van den Berg looks at the projects in his hands with humour, inverting and deconstructing the pre-defined structures and the instituted places of materials and components, creating objects that question the traditional systems of construction, fixing and decoration.

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Catalogue Marloes ten Bhömer

Marloes ten Bhömer it is not a simple footwear designer. She is an artist. A thinker. A questioner. She is critical when she rejects the stereotypes and identity imbalances that the fashion industry promotes. She is challenging when she questions gender in “traditionally” masculine disciplines. She is liberating when she analyses the peripheral role of women in cinema - through the act of walking - and proposes alternative models of thinking. For Marloes ten Bhömer, footwear - specially the feminine high heel - is a powerful means of expression, evocation, provocation, questioning and above all renewal.

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Catalogue Marianne Jongkind + Costa Magarakis

In the hands of Costa Magarakis, the most diverse models of high-heeled shoes, trainers, big boots and even skates become hybrid and realistic objects that emulate the deformed body of an animal, curious means of transport, architectural elements or the most bizarre of creatures.

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Catalogue Araceli Sancho + Kei Kagami

Kei Kagami looks at shoes, not as isolated pieces of a collection, but as an extension of his own narrative construction which is the basis to the development of his clothing collections. Setting aside commercial interests, he is dedicated solely to creating the right image for the collection. His shoes reveal all the creative potential of the designer, a product of his personal expression, his creative individuality and above all, his artistic honesty.

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Catalogue Estibalitz Diaz de Durana + Carolin Holzhuber

Introduced in the context of the programme cycle “Creating between worlds. From head to toe”, produced by the Hat and Shoe Museums, the exhibition “Elevated. Carolin Holzhuber footwear” brings us two symbolic worlds which seem antagonistic for this designer, fashion and art, the wearability of design as opposed to the dysfunctionality of art, the place of aesthetics in counterpoint to the place of ethics.

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Catalogue Anastasia Radevich

Anastasia has created allegories of multiple worlds for herself. Her creations take us on a journey between what is, what was, what could be. The chronologies of time and the countless spaces her art-shoes inhabit forward us to a sort of dystopia or negative utopia. We are warned.

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Catalogue Luis Onofre

The Shoe Museum emphasizes the design, art, and creativity that characterize this industry, so important to our country. These hallmarks are clearly highlighted in the inaugural temporary exhibition of this new institution that São João da Madeira is placing at the service of our country's culture and economy. With the elucidative title "Luís Onofre. A story of passion, tradition, and resilience," this first exhibition is dedicated to a leading shoe designer in Portugal and beyond.

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