© Images courtesy of Fábio Colaço and APARTAMENTO.
AS LONG AS WE BELIEVE:
APARTAMENTO AT ARTISSIMA
In dialogue with Guilherme Marques
FVTVRIST Magazine // October 29, 2026
This year, Marseille-based APARTAMENTO presents Portuguese artist Fábio Colaço at Artissima 2026 in Turin with As Long as We Believe, a solo presentation examining how power acquires legitimacy through collective belief. Through familiar objects, political symbols and visual contradictions, Colaço questions the mechanisms that determine what we recognise as truth, who has the authority to define it, and how systems of control become accepted as part of everyday life.
FVTVRIST speaks with APARTAMENTO founder Guilherme Marques about his decade-long relationship with Colaço, the politics of perception, surveillance in the age of algorithms, and the role of galleries in supporting critical artistic practices within the commercial environment of an international art fair.
Portrait of Fábio Colaço, Guilherme Marques. © Courtesy of APARTAMENTO.
At Artissima 2026, APARTAMENTO presents Fábio Colaço’s We Are Living (2026), a neon work bearing the statement: “We Are Living Somebody Else’s Apocalypse.” The phrase suggests that catastrophe is never experienced equally. Why did you feel it was particularly important to present this work now? And why bring this message to Turin, within the context of Artissima?
We live in a time of constant exposure to images of crisis, conflict, and destruction. They reach us daily, often through our phones, and have become part of our routine. Yet there is a striking distance between seeing something and actually experiencing it.
We Are Living emerges from that contradiction. What feels like the end of the world for one person can be just another image on someone else’s screen. We share the same world, but we do not experience it in the same way.
Fábio is interested in how we get used to these images, how we respond to them, and how quickly we move on to the next piece of information. The work is not a statement about any single conflict or event, but a reflection on how we experience the world today and how our sense of reality is shaped by what we are shown.
Presenting it at Artissima feels especially fitting. An art fair is a space where images, objects, and messages compete for attention, and neon is traditionally associated with the language of advertising. Borrowing it for a work that offers no product and no solution, only a question, creates a productive tension.
This year, APARTAMENTO has chosen to dedicate its entire Artissima booth to Portuguese artist Fábio Colaço. How did you first discover his practice, and how long have you been working together? What initially drew you to his artistic language, and what made you decide that this was the right moment for a solo presentation?
We met about ten years ago while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and our first collaboration at the gallery was in 2024, when he presented a solo show in Marseille. Artissima felt like the right opportunity to develop a more focused presentation of his work. What first drew me to Fábio’s practice was his ability to use familiar objects and simple gestures to address complex questions about power, politics, and contemporary society. His work moves between sculpture, installation, painting, and neon, yet there is a strong thread connecting these different forms. I’m particularly interested in how he uses irony and humour to challenge ideas and symbols we normally accept without question.
The works often appear simple at first, but they reveal contradictions that are both political and deeply rooted in everyday life. They also have a strong visual presence, which allows them to communicate before the viewer fully grasps their meaning. Rather than showing a selection of separate pieces, we wanted to create a dialogue between them, bringing different materials and ideas together within a shared concept. As Long as We Believe reflects many of the questions that run through Fábio’s practice, particularly the relationship between truth, belief, authority, and the systems that shape our understanding of reality.
1, 2/Installation view, As Long as We Believe, Fábio Colaço solo presentation, Artissima 2026, Turin.
© Courtesy of the artist and APARTAMENTO.
In Still Point Series (2026), Fábio Colaço presents ten sculptures in which arrows are lodged in solid rocks. What makes these works particularly compelling is the ambiguity of their symbolism. How do you read the series?
For me, these sculptures are about the tension between power and resistance. The starting point is quite simple. A rock is solid, heavy, and difficult to change. An arrow suggests movement, direction, and force. By placing arrows through the rocks, Fábio creates a situation that seems almost impossible: something that should resist is penetrated by something that imposes a direction. There is also a certain violence in these works. The rocks sit directly on the floor, almost like bodies, and the arrows enter from different directions. Still, the series isn’t meant to carry a single meaning. The arrows can stand for authority, pressure, or an imposed direction, while the rocks can suggest resistance, permanence, or even the failure of that resistance. There is also a note of absurdity in the gesture, which matters. An arrow going through a rock is almost ridiculous, and that humour is part of how the work operates.
I think what I’ve had to do is try to connect that language more with my own abstraction and my own way of seeing, and it will take my entire career to pursue it. I’m not trying to get away from what I’ve learned, because that language is part of my way of working, but rather to make it my own and to see what happens when I apply it to the way I personally perceive what I’m looking at. The titles of the individual sculptures open up further ideas, such as hope, collapse, order, or the possibility of change, without offering a clear answer. Ultimately, what interests me is the moment when something that appears stable, or impossible to change, becomes uncertain.
In Untitled (1984) (2024), the artist transforms George Orwell’s iconic novel into a monocle, positioned at eye level. Today, questions of surveillance, the manipulation of information, and the erosion of privacy seem more relevant than ever, particularly in an age of algorithms and artificial intelligence. How do you think this work resonates with our present reality? Has Orwell’s dystopian vision become less a literary warning than a framework through which we understand contemporary society?
The questions raised in 1984 are still very present today, even if the way we experience them has changed. We are constantly watching and being watched, often without thinking about it, and we also take part in these systems voluntarily. Algorithms and AI now shape what information we see, how opinions form, and how political narratives spread, mostly quietly, in the background. Orwell imagined surveillance imposed from outside, whereas now it’s built into the devices and platforms we choose to use.
That’s why the work is deliberately simple. It creates a physical experience of this relationship without any technology, and it points to something broader than surveillance: how we see the world, how information is controlled, and how our perception of reality can be shaped by systems we don’t fully understand. Perhaps that’s why the book still resonates so strongly. It is no longer only a warning about a possible future, but a way of recognising mechanisms that are already part of our everyday lives.
WE ARE LIVING EMERGES FROM THAT CONTRADICTION. WHAT FEELS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD FOR ONE PERSON CAN BE JUST ANOTHER IMAGE ON SOMEONE ELSE’S SCREEN. WE SHARE THE SAME WORLD, BUT WE DO NOT EXPERIENCE IT IN THE SAME WAY.
Fábio Colaço, Hell, 2023. White neon. © Courtesy of the artist and APARTAMENTO.
Your presentation, As Long as We Believe, is remarkably strong in both its visual language and its conceptual coherence. Across the booth, the artist confronts the viewer with questions of authority, ideological structures, collective belief, and the instability of what we accept as reality. How did you approach the curation of this presentation, and what is the central message you hope visitors will take away? More broadly, at a moment when contemporary art is increasingly expected to respond to political and social uncertainty, what responsibility do you believe galleries have in bringing such uncompromising artistic positions into the commercial environment of an art fair?
The starting point for As Long as We Believe was the idea that many of the structures that shape our world depend on our willingness to believe in them. We are surrounded by images, symbols, and information that influence how we understand reality, yet we rarely question where they come from or why we accept them as true. The presentation brings together works that explore this through different materials. In Wrong Sky, an artificial sky is printed on the soles of a pair of shoes, turning something we take as fixed upside down. In Untitled (1984), a familiar book becomes an object through which we can both see and be seen. The neon works turn anonymous street messages into permanent objects, the stone sculptures explore the tension between imposed direction and resistance, and the embroidered flag turns a symbol of national identity into the description of an imaginary place that exists only because we imagine it.
We wanted the presentation to feel visually direct, so visitors could engage with the works before discovering the questions behind them. Rather than offering answers, it invites them to question what they see, what they accept, and what they choose to believe. As for the role of galleries, we believe they should support artistic practices that question the world around us, even when those questions are uncomfortable. An art fair is a commercial environment, but it is also a place where artists, collectors, curators, and the public meet, creating room for dialogue. Art doesn’t need to solve political or social problems, but it can challenge how we understand them and open up new ways of looking at the world.
Fábio Colaço, Perfect Collapse, 2026. Rock and arrow.
© Courtesy of the artist and APARTAMENTO.
1/Fábio Colaço, Untitled (1984), 2024. George Orwell’s 1984, rubber band, poplar wood plinth.
2/Installation view, As Long as We Believe, Fábio Colaço solo presentation, Artissima 2026, Turin.
© Courtesy of the artist and APARTAMENTO.
About APARTAMENTO
Founded in Marseille in 2022 by Brazilian-born Guilherme Marques, APARTAMENTO emerged from an unconventional proposition: to reconsider the relationship between art, architecture, and everyday life. Initially established within a residential apartment, the gallery challenged the conventional boundaries between domestic and exhibition spaces, cultivating a curatorial approach defined by intimacy, experimentation, and direct encounters with contemporary art.
In 2026, APARTAMENTO entered a new chapter, relocating to a dedicated gallery space in Marseille and welcoming Marques’s husband, Benoit Palas, as a partner. Together, they expanded the programme to incorporate contemporary design alongside visual art. Today, APARTAMENTO brings local and international artistic practices into dialogue, fostering exchanges across disciplines while contributing to Marseille’s evolving cultural landscape.
