The Harvest Mural

Dona Custódia lives next door to StartArt. She keeps a close relationship with the land, and every so often she walks over with whatever it has given her — persimmons, passion fruit, whatever is ripe that week. Residents come and go. The fruit keeps arriving.

Victoria Akino noticed.

Victoria is a muralist from Hidalgo, Mexico. She first came to the house in 2025 and left two murals behind. This year she came back — and this time she wanted the wall to say something about the place itself.

“La inspiración fue justamente la agricultura,” she says. The inspiration was agriculture itself.

The result is the Mural das Colheitas — the Harvest Mural. Ears of corn. A hand holding a bunch of grapes. Vine leaves set with azulejo patterns. And a woman’s face, eyes closed, painted in the vivid colours Victoria carries with her from Mexico.

It is a tribute to the women who have worked the fields of Vila Verde for generations — usually without anyone painting them.

“Es muy importante que también se vea esa otra parte.”

It matters that this other part is seen too.

The village noticed too. O Vilaverdense, Vila Verde’s local newspaper, came to see the wall and told its story: a Mexican artist, a house by the river, a tribute to the women of the land.

For Alexandre, who runs the house, the mural marks a shift. Artists from more than 60 countries have passed through StartArt, each bringing their own story. Now the house wants to tell the stories of where it stands. “É a hora de também contar as histórias portuguesas,” he told the paper — it’s time to tell Portuguese stories too.

The mural joins more than thirty others across the old Quinta do Vau, by the Rio Homem. Each was left by someone who came for a week or a month.

This one began with a neighbour.

Read the full article by O Vilaverdense, Vila Verde’s local newspaper (in Portuguese) →