Artist-Run Spaces in Lisbon: Alternative Art Ecologies and Urban Resistance in the Neoliberal City

This paper explores artist-run spaces in Lisbon as urban cultural actors operating under conditions of neoliberal urbanization. While artistic initiatives are often positioned ambiguously, as both catalysts of gentrification and potential sites of resistance, this study focuses on their capacity to enact autonomy and open alternative imaginaries of urban life. The analysis examines how five Lisbon-based initiatives negotiate spatial precarity, financial insecurity, and institutional pressures while sustaining practices of self-organization, experimentation, and solidarity. Situating these practices within debates on neoliberal urban restructuring, cultural commodification, and the political role of art, the study argues that artist-run spaces constitute independent infrastructures that, through everyday grassroots work, resist full absorption of urban culture into market and policy logics. Although constrained by structural limitations and often operating within fragile conditions, their modest yet significant experiments in artistic and cultural autonomy help prefigure more inclusive and just forms of urban culture. Ultimately, the study positions artist-run spaces not only as sites of artistic production but also as agents of urban cultural commoning, fostering alternative relations and experiences in Lisbon’s contested landscape.