Fábio Colaço Portugal, b. 1995
Mirage, 2026
UV print on shoes.
Variable dimensions.
“Mirage” (2026) continues the artist’s recurring use of shoes as both sculptural objects and conceptual devices. In this work, the soles of a pair of shoes are UV-printed with a...
“Mirage” (2026) continues the artist’s recurring use of shoes as both sculptural objects and conceptual devices. In this work, the soles of a pair of shoes are UV-printed with a photograph of the sky, creating the uncanny impression of walking directly upon clouds. A familiar and mundane gesture, walking, is transformed into a poetic and destabilising act in which orientation, gravity, and symbolic order appear inverted.
The work proposes a subtle yet incisive reflection on perception and truth in contemporary society. By placing the sky beneath the feet, this piece reverses one of the most enduring metaphors of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who in “Truth and Politics” described factual truth as “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.” For Arendt, factual truth constitutes the shared framework that allows collective reality to exist, a stable horizon against which political and social life can unfold. Without agreement on basic facts, the world loses coherence and reality itself begins to waver. The piece stages the collapse of this stability. The sky, traditionally associated with transcendence, orientation, and openness, is relocated to the sole of the shoe, becoming something stepped on, worn down, and carried across unstable terrain. Truth no longer appears as a fixed horizon above us, but as an inverted and fragile surface vulnerable to distortion and erosion. In this sense, the sculpture becomes an image of the contemporary condition, an era in which truth is increasingly replaced by competing assumptions, mediated perceptions, and speculative narratives about reality.
Through the simplicity of its gesture, the work transforms an everyday object into a philosophical proposition. Walking on clouds becomes both impossible and strangely plausible, a mirage sustained by technology, imagination, and belief. The sculpture oscillates between irony and melancholy, suggesting a world in which certainty has dissolved and even the most elementary coordinates of reality can be reversed.
The work proposes a subtle yet incisive reflection on perception and truth in contemporary society. By placing the sky beneath the feet, this piece reverses one of the most enduring metaphors of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who in “Truth and Politics” described factual truth as “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.” For Arendt, factual truth constitutes the shared framework that allows collective reality to exist, a stable horizon against which political and social life can unfold. Without agreement on basic facts, the world loses coherence and reality itself begins to waver. The piece stages the collapse of this stability. The sky, traditionally associated with transcendence, orientation, and openness, is relocated to the sole of the shoe, becoming something stepped on, worn down, and carried across unstable terrain. Truth no longer appears as a fixed horizon above us, but as an inverted and fragile surface vulnerable to distortion and erosion. In this sense, the sculpture becomes an image of the contemporary condition, an era in which truth is increasingly replaced by competing assumptions, mediated perceptions, and speculative narratives about reality.
Through the simplicity of its gesture, the work transforms an everyday object into a philosophical proposition. Walking on clouds becomes both impossible and strangely plausible, a mirage sustained by technology, imagination, and belief. The sculpture oscillates between irony and melancholy, suggesting a world in which certainty has dissolved and even the most elementary coordinates of reality can be reversed.
