For the upcoming edition of Art Basel Paris 2025,

Madragoa presents new photographs by Jaime Wel-

sh staged within the former National Overseas Bank

and the National Library of Portugal. Conceived as

instruments of preservation, both spaces reveal

themselves as charged architectures where autho-

rity is performed.

Through a layered process of restoration and recon-

figuration, Welsh transforms the vaults and the boar-

droom into spaces of extreme symmetry and rigour

— at once oneiric and uncanny. The works will be

completed with specially designed frames in sapele

wood, with a gilded front that echoes the materials

found within the images themselves.

At the Bank, Welsh worked inside the subterra-

nean vaults — monumental chambers containing

more than 3,500 safe-deposit boxes. Built as ulti-

mate structures of security and secrecy, the vaults

are inhabited by two young girls — chaotic intruders

whose presence fractures the order of control.

At the National Library, attention turns to the boar-

droom, where two gilded portraits of former directors

line the walls, marking eras of monarchy and dicta-

torship. Authority here is not only administrative but

ceremonial, sustained through rituals of power and

selective memory.

The children remain enigmatic, turned away or va-

cant in expression. They evoke the precarious mo-

ment of early childhood, when identity is inscribed

and after which nothing can be undone. This fragility

renders the photographs dangerous: not the austere

settings themselves, but the fact that these children

are caught at the very moment when the self is being

formed.

Welsh treats architecture not as backdrop but as a li-

ving organism, bearing memory, trauma, and ideolo-

gy in its walls. The safes and the boardroom emerge

as monuments that both guard and suffocate: sites

where power is displayed, yet unsettled by the pre-