As an ecotone — a zone of contact and transition — the Azores is a place where the living and the non-living intersect, and where the boundaries between geospheres and biospheres become porous. Throughout its history, the archipelago has been a site of passage and friction: between tectonic plates, continents, and worlds. From transatlantic crossings to military and scientific infrastructures, and from the spiritual and agricultural practices that shaped these islands, this territory carries profound geological, political, and cultural marks.

It is within this framework that the first edition of the Walk&Talk Biennial, entitled "Gestures of Abundance," takes place. From these islands, considered an ultra-peripheral region, this question arises: how can we shift our perception of scarcity towards one of cooperative abundance? This shift is not rhetorical — it is ethical, ecological, and political. It calls for practices that regenerate, that emerge from listening, and that privilege connection over isolation. Abundance here is not excess or accumulation, but a density of relations: between worlds, knowledges, species, practices, and temporalities. It invites us to map other ways of seeing and sensing, to think with the territory rather than merely about it — drawing from its geological, spiritual, cultural, and political strata.

We live in a time marked by profound destabilizations: environmental collapse, intensifying political tensions, setbacks in fundamental rights, and a growing fragmentation of the social fabric. The mechanisms that once sustained our lives show signs of exhaustion, and the promises of progress reveal their fallacies. In this context, it becomes urgent to reconsider gestures that care, that listen, that transform — gestures capable of reactivating forgotten knowledges, repairing broken bonds, and imagining other ways of inhabiting the world collectively and responsibly. Art, as a space of experimentation, sharing, and collective invention, provides the conditions to imagine and rehearse them.

Archipelagic thought and Indigenous cosmologies invite us to recognize Earth as an active, relational force, rather than a passive stage upon which life unfolds. This perspective has inspired the Biennial’s curatorial process: rhizomatic, sensitive, grounded in autonomy and proximity. More than an exhibition-making project — it is a proposal for social and cultural advocacy. A space to experiment with models of relationality between art, territory, and community. A Biennial that seeks to be rooted, committed to local ecosystems emerging from collective intelligence and generosity.

Curated collaboratively by Claire Shea, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Jesse James, and Liliana Coutinho, in dialogue with the organization’s teams, Walk&Talk Biennial 2025 takes shape as a collective and attentive process. Starting from the gesture as a form of action and imagination, Gestures of Abundance brings together commissions developed in residency in the Azores, existing works, and projects that activate an ecology of practices, ideas, and relationships.