On 28 November 2025, the Tires prison, alongside the Leira prison, inaugurated the second artist-in-residence programme as part of the project “Le porte che la poesia ha aperto” (“The doors that poetry has opened”), in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice of the Government of the Portuguese Republic – Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services, with the support of ZET – Gallery and Fundação Jornada.
At the Tires Prison, which houses mothers serving sentences alongside their children, a second ‘Door of Hope’ has been unveiled, created by the artist Fernanda Fragateiro.
The installation
Fernanda Fragateiro’s art project involved around 15 mothers and their children, as well as a group of volunteers including the curator Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, two members of her studio, Marquesa Giraud and Oleksandr Ivanov, and the social worker Maria José Barbosa. The artist engaged in a creative dialogue with the imprisoned mothers, who selected ten terms which, interwoven with poetic extracts chosen by the curator, gave rise to the phrases that now enliven the prison’s spaces. At the same time, cushions were created using 70x70 cm sheets of cardboard, thanks to the contribution of the sewing workshop at Tires Prison. Finally, the heart of the project centred on the renovation of the twenty iron cell doors using a selection of colours chosen by the artist: the idea is that of a door that closes at the end of the day to allow the mothers and children to rest, symbolically shutting away dreams and imagination.
