Legends are known for being passed down from generation to generation and enduring through tradition. However, in recent years, contemporary art has witnessed what we might call inverted legends: a future tradition narrated by artists through a multiplicity of media.

Anchored to the theme Inverted Legends, the 4th edition of eMMA - Exhibition of the Master's Degree in Media Arts at the University of Minho brings together a series of installations shaped by assumptions or premonitions that invite viewers to reflect and interact. As a result of a society that lives more in the future than in the present, these works imagine dystopian scenarios and subjective representations of humanity and its relationship with the environment. Encouraging thought and reflection, they raise a central question: what is the human way of being in the world? In an attempt to find the answer, the artists address invented and recontextualised memories, speculation on possible and uncertain futures, generating new readings and interpretations of a collective tradition that is yet to come.

Opening on 18 July (at 6 p.m.), the exhibition will be on display at gnration (Braga, PT) until the 26th to present seven pieces:

Small laboratory for recreating humans, by Líria Varne
Using objects, sounds, and projections that awaken shared memories, this work explores Artificial Intelligence as a tool for archiving and managing information, crossing ideas of affective awareness, identity, and technology to create emersive narratives that challenge the boundaries between what is lived, imagined, and digitally forged.

Echoes of Memory: What if the world wasn't as we know it?, by Andresa Salazar
Starting from the impact of human actions on the environment, the installation proposes a provocative reflection on the consequences of climate change and how these transform not only nature, but also our memories.

imerge, by Emanuele Inácio and Vera Viera
Involving the audience in a choreography of pulsations and silences, imerge questions how light, sound, and atmosphere can drive the emotional state of the human being. Inspired by studies into phenomenology, game feel, and the symbolism of light, the artists seek to create an environment where emotion becomes guidance and the video game a sensitive echo of the experience.

Fire and Chaos - Journey of the Pyrocene, by João Sousa
Combining digital images, sounds, and textures to simulate a forest fire, the work is inspired by the concept of the Pyrocene - which describes the current geological era in which fire has an enormous influence on landscapes and climate - to show how environmental impact and climate change have turned fire into a global threat.

Welcome to the new subnormal: portals to drowned worlds, by Luis Henrique Almeida de Oliveira
Using videos and artefacts that speculate future scenarios, this portal combines the crossroads between past, present, and future to nurture sensibilities, question our role on the planet, and unlock synergies in the natural, human, and more-than-human worlds.

Fragmented Human: an artistic proposal for the visual interpretation of human ephemerality, by Rafael Sousa
Crossing the ephemerality of human experience with an idea of the aesthetics of data visualisation, Fragmented Human converts data into sensory experiences to propose a reflection on the complexity of the interdependence between the different moments that make up human existence.

Becoming a simulated book, by Mariana Gomes
Becoming a simulated book is an unstable surface that retains, distorts, and fades; a space where memory is not given, but provoked. Composed of an analogue screen - thick, curved, and with unstable light - which projects fragments of a partially revealed narrative, in this installation the gesture is the trigger for activation, where each interaction remakes the order of what is seen, restarting the reading and proposing an oscillation between body and object, between presence and disappearance.

More information about the exhibition at gnration.pt.

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The Master's Degree in Media Arts at the University of Minho will have a new edition in the 2025/2026 academic year. The last call for applications runs from 3 to 8 September. Learn more at Mestrado Media Arts.