Paula Albuquerque is an Amsterdam-based Portuguese artist and scholar. She is senior researcher at Rietveld Sandberg Research and from 2019 to 2025 the coordinator of the research group Third cycle in Artistic Research at the Rietveld (TARR) for PhDs in the Arts. She is also an assistant researcher at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the latter in collaboration with EYE Film Museum and the Portuguese Cinematheque.
For her latest solo exhibition Colonised Landscapes and Spectral Deterritorialised Flora (2024) at Zone2Source in Amsterdam, Albuquerque focuses on the portrayal of the colonised landscape in formerly occupied territories, alongside the role of early film as a form of proto-surveillance in sustaining and perpetuating colonial structures. The material is drawn from the Eye Film Museum archive, including home movies made between 1912 and 1940 in the former East and West Indies, which depicts Dutch settlers’ journeys that shaped how the Netherlands perceived its overseas territories.
As an artist, Paula Albuquerque has had several solo exhibitions to her name, including: galleries Zone2Source (2024); Bradwolff Projects (2023, 2018, 2015), Looiersgracht 60 (2023) and Nieuw Dakota (2020). Her films have been presented at International Film Festivals DocLisboa (2023), Sheffield DOC|Fest (2020) and IFFR Rotterdam (2016).
She presented papers at conferences Media in Transition at MIT; NECSUS Conference; and Visible Evidence. She published the books Enter the Ghost – Haunted Media Ecologies (2020) and The Webcam as an Emerging Cinematic Medium (2018).
TARR – What follows a Master of Fine Arts when one desires further development in one’s education as artist? How to become aware of what a potential PhD (or equivalent) in the Arts mail entail, and for whom may this represent a suitable trajectory? The session consists of a short introduction to the different possibilities to choose from when pursuing a Third cycle in education in the Arts in the Netherlands (including insights into prospective collaborations with institutions abroad). This entails highlighting the differences between the formal degrees entitled Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Professional Doctorate (PD) and the Rietveld’s own Creator Doctus (CrD).
On the 13th of October 2023, the participating researchers of the research group Third cycle in Artistic Research at the Rietveld (TARR) hosted a public presentation and an exhibition at the Rietveld Gym. The presentation and exhibition was a communal moment for the group of researchers who worked together in the space for three days and experienced and learned more about each other’s work. The talks with the invited respondents, Alice Twemlow and Astrid Korporaal, were very productive and the contact with the public very stimulating.
TARR – The research group Third cycle in Artistic Research at the Rietveld (TARR) hosts participants both internal and external to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (GRA) and the Sandberg Instituut (SI), under the coordination of Senior Researcher Paula Albuquerque. It focuses on methodical discussions about artistic research and learning skills for Third cycle candidates and other advanced researchers who are preparing a PhD, a PD or a CrD. The participating researchers will discuss their process and share materials by way of a public presentation and by exhibiting in the space to exchange knowledge and experiences.
Research Café is an informal seminar series where you can learn more about various research methodologies from different senior researchers from Rietveld Sandberg Research. These seminars are open to all students, staff, tutors, and alumni of the Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut.
Hinterlands (2021), as the title of the first ARIAS book publication, grounds time and geography for tuning into the invisible in-between knowledge that emerges from hybrid collaborative research practices; practices which in other words are transdisciplinary. As a very real imaginary that playfully points to the outskirts of dominant research parameters; Hinterlands is a space to experiment and move slower.
The research fellowships are a Sandberg/Rietveld initiative to pursue different knowledge practices involving topics such as Artificial Intelligence, The City and New Materials. From both Rietveld and Sandberg a few candidates are selected to research one of the topics and share their project with the students and the community. This fellowship symposium is an ONLINE EVENT open to all Rietveld and Sandberg students: live.sandberg.nl.
Professional Doctorate (PD) /Creator Doctus (CrD) – On the 28th of September 2020 Yael Davids has publicly defended her research concluding the first Creator Doctus (CrD) trajectory.