Between the intimacy of everyday gestures and the strength of human connection, Portuguese artist based in France, Kelly Santos, presents Gestures of Love, a deeply autobiographical project that moves across cities, emotions, and cultures.
After being shown in Mexico City and New York, the third chapter now arrives in Porto, offering a sensitive reflection on love, vulnerability, and presence in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Q: You are a Portuguese artist living in France, with an international trajectory. Where do you feel your artistic gaze truly begins?
A: As the daughter of immigrants, I feel that I belong to several places at once. I consider myself a citizen of the world — European, Portuguese, but also French. I think that perspective has always been part of me.
From a very early age, I felt a strong connection to the arts: literature in particular, music, photography. Visiting museums has always been part of my routine. I studied theatre and photography and, over time, I’ve been surrounded by artists who deeply inspire me. The conversations we have about art are essential to my evolution, my work, and my research.
Q: “Gestures of Love” begins with small, almost invisible gestures. What interests you most: love as an idea or as an everyday detail?
A: I’m deeply interested in small gestures, in routines that many people might consider banal or inconvenient, but where I find immense beauty. The repetition of the gesture.
Daily love, presence, beauty in simple things. Remembering the habits of those we love, offering attention, listening, and presence.
Q: This project was presented in Mexico City and New York before arriving in Porto. What changed — not only in the works themselves, but in your own understanding of love — between those cities?
A: I loved the exhibition in Mexico City. It was produced by my dear friend Carlos Carrillo, and it was incredibly meaningful to work surrounded by people I love and admire.
In New York, I also worked with Kenza Adeïda, as I did in Mexico City. These are cities I love and where I truly feel at home.
The Porto chapter is curated by Patricia Reis, who is also a friend and someone whose work I deeply admire. In many ways, this project is also a story about friendship and the support I’ve received throughout this journey.
Love is precisely the guiding thread of every chapter of Gestures of Love. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded and accompanied by so much love.
Q: Are there differences in the way different cultures express love?
A: Absolutely. We, Portuguese, for example, carry this feeling of saudade that defines us and is very difficult to explain to someone who isn’t from here.
Q: Your work has a very emotional dimension. How do you decide the limit between intimacy and exposure? What to reveal and what to protect?
A: I chose to expose love and what defines it for me. I don’t impose many limits on my creativity. I need a great deal of freedom to create, and I’m lucky to be able to have that.
Intimacy is part of the work, but I also believe that each person projects their own experience onto it.
Q: Working with love implies vulnerability. To what extent is your work autobiographical?
A: It is completely personal and entirely autobiographical. I can only speak about what I have truly felt.
It’s vulnerable work because it exposes my vision of gestures of love and, inevitably, something deeply intimate. I like showing fragility and flaws — that’s what makes us human, or at least what defines me as a person.
Q: In an increasingly fast and digital world, speaking about “gestures” feels almost like an act of resistance. Is your work also a reaction to the times we live in?
A: We live in a world where everything happens too quickly and where there seems to be no time for anything. This project was also an attempt to pause and question what loving truly means to me.
I hope visitors leave the exhibition wanting to look more carefully at what — and who — they love. That they find space to stop, to feel, and even to expose their own fragility. I think that can be healing.
Q: This is the third chapter of the project, and it takes place in Portugal. What do you hope the Portuguese audience will see that others perhaps have not?
A: Each chapter is different. This one was created specifically for Babell in Porto, and it will be deeply connected to literature and to what we communicate through writing. I felt it was important to integrate my work into the philosophy of the event.
It is an honour to have been invited alongside architects, artists, writers, and curators whose work I deeply admire and respect.
