Nuno Viegas and Norwegian artist Ståle Gerhardsen have completed “Play Attention,” a collaborative mural for the eighth Festival Infinito in Cascais, Portugal.
Painted in spray paint across an approximately 17.5-by-7.4-metre wall, the work brings together Viegas’s anonymous adult figure and Gerhardsen’s more playful characters. Small figures climb, hang from and move around the central body, creating a charged encounter between gravity and release.
Image via https://www.instagram.com/p/DdhMlVnjO41/
The artists describe “Play Attention” as an exploration of adult responsibility against the freedom commonly attached to childhood. Rather than portraying children directly, its surrounding figures stand for a state of mind: spontaneity, imagination and a willingness to embrace the absurd. They appear to pull the serious, closed figure upwards, towards a space where play has no instrumental purpose.
That push and pull remains central to the composition. The adult figure retains a sense of reserve, while also yielding to the unruly activity around him. For Viegas and Gerhardsen, the mural considers the playful part of oneself that can remain present beneath the routines and obligations of adult life.
“Play Attention” was painted during Festival Infinito’s 2026 return to Bairro da Torre, where eight artists worked in four pairs across four walls between September 7 and 14. Organised by the youth association Somos Torre with support from the Municipality of Cascais, the festival continues the neighbourhood’s ongoing transformation into an open-air collection of murals. The collaboration was the artists’ second together this year, according to Viegas.
Images via @nunoviegas.pt on Instagram.
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