Second Nature brought together around fifty works by twenty-six artists from different generations, stemming from a research into the Portuguese art collection owned by the EDP Foundation that took account of current debates on the natural world and its representations. The result is a unique portrait of artistic production in Portugal over the last fifty years, a period in which the idea of nature has undergone a profound change. The exhibition offers multi-faceted testimonies to the inseparable nature of the bond between people and the natural world. This relationship has triggered intense multi-disciplinary debates, specifically around the notion of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch defined by the impact of human activity on the environment.

The exhibition route is arranged according to sub-themes that include the cultural construction of the natural world; an analysis of the garden as a critical device; the non-mimetic representation of specific elements of nature and landscape; and the link between the natural and the technological. In addition to works that have rarely been shown to the public, the exhibition also features a series of works that have recently been acquired by the EDP Foundation.
In tandem with a set of works rarely shown to the public (such as the ones by Manuel Baptista, Michael Biberstein,

Fernando Calhau, Luisa Correia Pereira, and Noronha da Costa), the exhibition featured a series of recent acquisitions by artists such as Gabriela Albergaria, Alberto Carneiro, Alexandre Estrela, João Grama, Mariana Marote, Miguel Soares and Pedro Vaz.

Second Nature was the first of a series of Perspectives that the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology devoted to the EDP Foundation Art Collection. For these series, presented in both exhibition and book formats, a guest curator and a curator from the museum focused on a theme that translates into a particular selection of works. The range of curatorial choices examines the works of art in the collection as a living platform that triggers different reflections on, and interpretations of, contemporary life.