Via Utopia
2026 | 5 printed acrylic sheets on a 30 cm depth box, 88 x 105 cm_ commissioned by the Museum of Presidency of the Republic of Portugal.
Artwork Images by Ana Aragão_ Photography by Vhils
Via Utopia, presented at the Museum of Presidency (Belém Palace) in march 2026, was designed 10 years ago. Based on Piranesi's Via Appia, this original version consisted of 6 layers of enormous printed glass planes.
Although the artwork was now smaller in size, its nature did not change. Nuno Grande referred to it as a scientific theatre. For Ana, the interest was in considering whether it was possible to enter inside a drawing. Instead of looking at the past, she proposed looking at a frozen present, a graphic list enumerating objects, symbols, figures, ironies: Trump next to a brain, Damien Hirst's cow sectioned with a world map in the form of a stain, brand-name cars and shoes, shopping malls with suitcases, large fish, a Chinese cat, Starck's juicer, A Clockwork Orange, Homer Simpson, a pyramid with self-help books, a painter under the sink, mausoleums transformed into ATM machines, tombs that are solariums, etc., etc., etc.
While the old, original image by Piranesi looks at the past symbolically and nostalgically — with classical architecture and art as the object of gaze and representation — in Ana Aragão´s Via Utopia the focus is the present, with its bizarre hypertextuality and excess of information. It reflects on the uncritical relationship of contemporary beings with their environment and their capacity to think and filter information. In this case, the portuguese artist places herself in a displaced future, without place or time, and looks at the present while recognizing the absurdity of relationships between so many references.
Eudoxia Rug
2015 | Collaboration with Ferreira de Sá
Photography by Rui Manuel Vieira
Eudoxia Rug was designed by Ana Aragão and named after one of the invisible Cities of Italo Calvino. Hand-tufted by Ferreira de Sá (one of the oldest companies dedicated to traditional tapestry in Portugal), the drawing has given rise to a unique edition of rugs.
“In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city’s true form. At first sight, nothing seems to resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines (…)”
Just like in Eudoxia, the artist has created a city to be seen from above, as if from the sky. All four sides may be the bottom or the top, creating a perspective rupture and bringing the “visitor” inside the rug, as if experiencing the vortex of Alice in Wonderland.
Via Utopia
2016 | Glass sculpture commissioned by Jofebar
Photography by Rui Vieira
The pretext was to think about the future. The result: an impossible promenade through the ruins of the present. More than the tempting fantastic vision of futuristic style, Via Utopia is a megalomaniac view of a schizophrenic present in permanent uncritical accumulation, and the realisation of the impossibility of the processing of this profusion of information by contemporary man.
Porto Barros Whine Bottle
2015 | Bottle labels for Porto Barros Port Whine
Challenged by Sogevinus, the artist created the labels for the 'Barros - Cidades de Portugal' collection, a way for the brand to strengthen its presence as an ambassador for Portugal and Portuguese talent. The cities of Portugal are Aveiro, Coimbra, Porto and Lisbon.
Homeland - News from Portugal
2014 | Developed for the Portuguese representation at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Three illustrations developed for the Portuguese representation of architecture in the Venice Biennale of 2014, responding to Rem Koolhaas’s main theme - Fundamentals - Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014.
The project, with curatorship of the architect Pedro Campos Costa, consisted in the distribution of a newspaper entitled Homeland - News from Portugal with news about the architectonic, social and economic panorama of the country throughout the last 100 years.

