Lemos was previously Curator at TBA21—Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, where she led a commissioning and fellowship programme centred on ecological and community-based practices. From 2018 to 2021, she was Curator of Public Programmes and Research at Nottingham Contemporary, developing collaborative projects including the multi-year Sonic Continuum, which explored sound and its relationship to social change.
Lemos was also associate curator of the 2nd Riga Biennial (2020), a visiting curator at Galeria Municipal do Porto (2017–18), and collaborated on the public program of Contour Biennale 8 (2017). She has curated exhibitions and programmes with multiple international institutions and edited Reluctant Gardener (2025), Meandering: Art, Ecology, and Metaphysics (2024), Sonic Continuum (2021) and Metabolic Rifts (2019). Lemos regularly lectures and writes for publications such as e-flux criticism, Frieze, Mousse and Spike.
Founded in 2003, Contour Biennale has grown into one of Belgium’s leading biennales and remains one of Europe’s few biennales dedicated to the moving image. Over the past two decades, it has established itself as a space for artistic inquiry and critical reflection on the urgencies of our time, committed to artistic and curatorial research. The biennale is currently going through an organisational transition, resulting in transformation being both method and condition.
Sofia Lemos: “I have long admired the artistic practices, debates, and encounters made possible by Contour Biennale. I am humbled by this appointment and grateful for the opportunity to expand its scope, approaching images as forces that both move us and mobilise change. Over the past months, I have been excited to work closely with artists in developing the projects, moods, and intensities that will shape this edition, as well as to collaborate with the newly formed biennale team throughout the process. Curating the 11th edition also means becoming part of its own transformation, and an opportunity to contribute to a pressing conversation about the role of biennales today: what they can offer artists, local communities, and audiences at a time of profound structural, political, environmental, and social change.”
Director Heidi Ballet: “Each edition of the Contour Biennale is shaped by a strong curatorial vision and a close engagement with the questions of the present. We are excited to be working with Sofia Lemos whose practice is marked by a sustained engagement with ecological questions and transformation—concerns that resonate strongly with the moment Contour Biennale finds itself in today.”