My first words are to thank Her Majesty Queen Sonja and Her Royal Highness Princess Martha Louise for giving us the honour of being present today, an honour that is all the more significant when we know of their interest in art and artists. We are grateful to the Stenersenmuseet and to its director, Mr. Øystein Ustvedt for his friendly hospitality and the prompt and competent manner with which they welcomed this initiative. The exhibition we are now opening aims to provide an idea of Portuguese contemporary art, through a selection of thirty young artists. All of them are under 40 and some have exhibited at major international art exhibitions, in a range of idioms, from painting to video, drawing to photography, sculpture to installations. Pedro Portugal, the curator of this exhibition, whom I would also like to thank for his help, is himself a very creative plastic artist, deeply involved in the Portuguese cultural scene.

In promoting this exhibition on my State visit to Norway, my aim is to interest the Norwegians, a people we greatly admire, to get to know Portugal a little better, a new Portugal that this year celebrates 30 years of democracy. We are an old nation with a rich, over eight hundred years old history, which like all histories, is made of light and darkness. Today we are an open country that wishes to take an active part in the major civilisational and cultural debates of our time. Contemporary art is at the crossroads of some of the most important debates in our society. In its diversity contemporary art is heir to a tradition of rupture and irreverence that marked 20th century art. It represents a critical, creative and often ironic and demystifying look on itself, on our societies and the times in which we live. I believe this is quite evident in this exhibition, which we dedicate to the Norwegian people as a token of friendship – and a sign of encounters in modernity and in the invention of the future.


			Speeche by His Excellency the President of the Portuguese Republic, at the Opening of a Portguese Modern Art Exibition "30 Portuguese Artists under 40" Oslo 04 de Fevereiro de 2004 My first words are to thank Her Majesty Queen Sonja and Her Royal Highness Princess Martha Louise for giving us the honour of being present today, an honour that is all the more significant when we know of their interest in art and artists. We are grateful to the Stenersenmuseet and to its director, Mr. Øystein Ustvedt for his friendly hospitality and the prompt and competent manner with which they welcomed this initiative. The exhibition we are now opening aims to provide an idea of Portuguese contemporary art, through a selection of thirty young artists. All of them are under 40 and some have exhibited at major international art exhibitions, in a range of idioms, from painting to video, drawing to photography, sculpture to installations. Pedro Portugal, the curator of this exhibition, whom I would also like to thank for his help, is himself a very creative plastic artist, deeply involved in the Portuguese cultural scene. In promoting this exhibition on my State visit to Norway, my aim is to interest the Norwegians, a people we greatly admire, to get to know Portugal a little better, a new Portugal that this year celebrates 30 years of democracy. We are an old nation with a rich, over eight hundred years old history, which like all histories, is made of light and darkness. Today we are an open country that wishes to take an active part in the major civilisational and cultural debates of our time. Contemporary art is at the crossroads of some of the most important debates in our society. In its diversity contemporary art is heir to a tradition of rupture and irreverence that marked 20th century art. It represents a critical, creative and often ironic and demystifying look on itself, on our societies and the times in which we live. I believe this is quite evident in this exhibition, which we dedicate to the Norwegian people as a token of friendship – and a sign of encounters in modernity and in the invention of the future.