In 2000 the Portuguese socialist government decriminalised all drugs, including heroine and cocaine. Born in Portugal in the aftermath of Salazar's dictatorship, shortly before the Revolution of the Carnations of April 25 1974, I grew up in a country at once eager to legitimize itself within contemporary Europe and hesitant to relinquish its stoic religiousness. After moving to Britain in the 1980s, the degree to which Portuguese society seemed unaffected by multiculturalism became increasingly apparent to me. Immigrants from former Portuguese colonies lived out their lives in favelas; gypsies were equally ostracized; civil rights discourses diffused in the everyday. The decision to decriminalize drug use therefore came as a shock. That year, the collision between conventionally religious festivals and the open subcultural gatherings that now pervaded street life were surreal, incompatible. It seemed a fascinating cultural clash. The more I considered the issue the more I placed it in perspective, however. Portugal (like all lands, but perhaps more extremely so by the nature of its very geography) has always been multicultural. Its multiculturalism pervades every aspect of Portuguese society. Though clashes have occurred throughout its history, cultures coexist, fuse, mutate. Originally an exhibition at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, culturalclash, is a photographic collection continually in revision. It constitutes my own reflexivity on this phenomenon.