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The beginning of everything, from where we set out for the self, for others and for the world.
This work belongs to a series of works entitled “Black Works” that seek to use the essayistic aspect that black and white photography allows, further reinforced by the black backgrounds, as a way of exploring and individually considering themes that are essential to photographic practices in the context of the visual arts. They aim to be signs and not symbols, opening up space for the viewer to decide what they mean, without wrong answers, starting from the objective to reach the subjective. In a mirrored surface, the viewer sees his own reflection. It is not just the market that is at stake.
Tiago Leonardo (2000) lives and works in Lisbon. He has a degree in Art and Heritage Sciences from FBAUL, and is currently in the final year of a master's degree in Aesthetics and Artistic Studies with a specialization in cinema and photography (FCSH).
His work has been reflecting photography and photography in the specific context of the visual arts, revealing the privilege of theoretical training over practice. It emerges as an idea, with practice being the mere execution of the same.
Although his artistic practice began in 2021, the artist has already participated in several group exhibitions, awards and residencies.
The way a person experiences a place is inseparable from their previous experience and the deep relationships they seek to establish with it. The Romans used the Latin term “Genius Loci” to define the spirit of an inhabited place, the mystical and ephemeral characteristic that makes us feel that we belong to it.
“What is left” is a photography project that seeks to explore this idea of belonging to a place and the possibility of finding a sense of “home” even in places where one would least expect it. The landscape is the pretext for questioning, where chance becomes inhabited and the banal is confused with the magnificent.
He has a degree in Communication Design (2015-2018) from FBAUL, and is currently taking the Photography Project and Book Construction course (2021-present) at Atelier de Lisboa and a master's degree in Communication and Arts at NOVA FCSH (2022-present).
In 2022, he completed the Serra do Açor Artistic Residency (2022) supervised by artist Jem Southam. In November 2021, he received an honorable mention in the 2022th edition of the Sintra Photography Award, participating in the exhibition of the award-winning works in February XNUMX held at the Sintra Museum of Arts.
Design plays a key role in changing mindsets and should be a disruptive agent in our conservative society. This is how the Kinky Ceramics collection came about, consisting of traditional pieces that have been modified with BDSM artefacts, using their aesthetic side in an attempt to break down the barrier of society's aversion to fetish culture.
Taking advantage of the plasticity of the ceramic pieces, Kinky objects are applied, which thus present various deformations, as if they were parts of the body.
I recently graduated in industrial design and am currently studying for a master's degree in product design at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design das Caldas da Rainha, where I am currently developing my thesis. My research is based on the role of design in our society and how it can be a transformative agent, in a search for a more progressive mindset.
I consider myself an activist with a great critical spirit regarding society's problems and, for this reason, my design work tends to be of a manifesto nature.
The project “Era (e é) uma vez o Vitória” is the first children’s book about the centennial history of Vitória Sport Clube. This independent work, published by the author, in which Catarina Peixoto is responsible for the illustration, layout and production, aims to present Vitória in a captivating and educational way to a (much) younger audience.
The illustrator and author Paulo César Gonçalves came together to provide something new to the population of a city located in the north of Portugal, Guimarães. Above all, the work deals with the emotional bond that unites generations.
Catarina Peixoto was born in Guimarães in 1994, and holds a master's degree in illustration from the Escola Superior Artística de Guimarães (ESAG), a degree in graphic design and advertising from the Escola Superior de Estudos Industriais e Gestão (ESEIG) and a degree in communication design from the Escola Artística Soares dos Reis. Over time, she has collaborated on several projects. In 2021, she won the Young Creators award in the illustration and comics category with the project Postais Ilustrados de Guimarães. She currently works as a freelancer, where she performs illustration and graphic design functions.
“The Washerwomen” explores the local identity of the village of Olho Marinho, representing the women who went to the spring to wash their clothes. This space is one of the main attractions of the town, and this mural reflects the daily reality of the place in the mid-50s.
Lime appears as the raw material, a typical characteristic of the town of Óbidos, where time is a medium. The ephemerality of the work results from external phenomena that we artistically assume, which give the mural now and in the post-development the dynamic and evolutionary character that defines it.
Dafla is a duo formed in 2020 with the aim of developing mural paintings. Composed of Flávia Martins, 23 years old, graduated in Graphic Design and Multimedia from ESAD.cr, currently studying for a master's degree in Visual Arts Education at the University of Porto; and Daniela Fortunato, 23 years old, graduated in Graphic Design and Multimedia from ESAD.cr, where she is currently finishing her master's degree in the same area. In addition to urban art, she has a special taste for illustration, which she hopes to take far in the future.
In Caldas da Rainha, there is still a tradition that is unique in the country: the fruit market, a daily open-air market where local producers sell their products. This set of illustrations aims to preserve and enhance in a visual composition this which is an example of local culture, from my area, which we still manage to keep active.
The set consists of three illustrations showing the square, from the vendor to an aerial view, in an attempt to convey the atmosphere of the square. These illustrations were developed throughout 2022.
Daniela Fortunato, 23 years old, from Caldas da Rainha. Graduated in Graphic Design and Multimedia from Esad.CR, where she is currently finishing her master's degree in the same area. Her main hobby, and ambitiously aiming to be something more than just that, is illustration. Through it, she aims to represent situations, ideas, people, among others, through a colorful and friendly look. In addition to illustration, she is a member of the duo DAFLA, which has been developing mural paintings since 2020.
This work proposes an attentive and silent look, of someone looking through the keyhole or behind the curtain, like a voyeur and entering the private, the intimacy of the other. Because it was conceived as a co-authorship, it has several symbolic charges that are linked to intimate places, but distinct even though with points in common to its authors.
“I’m waiting for you here, floating, wrapped in nothing. I want you all. Body present. Soul too. Your arms, my lap, our fertile warmth. Here, but outside of all this. Come, I’m waiting for you here.”
Eva Couteiro was born in December 1994, in Porto, Portugal. She holds a degree in Fine Arts – Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, Portugal. She has participated in group exhibitions since 2013. She lives in Ovar and currently combines motherhood and artistic production.
João Salgueiro Baptista (1994), Portuguese. Graduated in Fine Arts in the field of Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. He has a Master's degree in Artistic Photography from the Institute of Cultural Production and Image. Lives and works in Porto. He is a member of Atelier Caldeiras.
The “SuperPower” proposal is inspired by pressure, success, and impostor syndrome. Through a language that acts on different planes, it creates space for a double and divided narrative in the character, of mixed emotions, of an eternal dissatisfaction, which unfolds and overcomes in order to belong and follow – as if he had super powers. However, there is, in contrast and in agreement, the daily questioning in the search for transcendence, for recognition, which always seems impossible to achieve.
Daily in this mismatch, in this setback, aiming for the sky – against time, against us.
c'marie is Constança Bettencourt, a Portuguese visual artist who seeks her expression by alternating between drawing, sculpture, painting, watercolour and acrylic, mural painting and, more recently, through the digital aspect. Her visual identity assumes and maintains the initial traces of graphic construction, the exploratory lines, in agreement and simultaneously in contrast with the plasticity of colour, when capturing faces, expressions and gestures.
He graduated in Sculpture from FBAUL, was part of the Erasmus program in Sculpture, at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence and has a master's degree in Plastic Arts, ESAD.CR.
Histórias Viandantes is a project that combines literature, illustration and urban art to try to give voice to the streets and make the city tell its own story. Based on the collection of local stories, the tales were fantasized, which gave rise to the illustrations and ended up on the walls of some streets in Viana do Castelo. In any narrative there is a path: we go from the beginning to the end, if not in the story, at least in our understanding. The tales presented here are some of those paths.
Rui Coelho was born in Viana do Castelo and graduated in Biology. He also studied Illustration, but it is in writing that he feels fulfilled. He has worked as a nature guide, in an environmental NGO, among many other things. He has two published books (“A Migração das Alforrecas”, Livros Horizonte and “O Meu Amigo Ferrabrás”, Truz Truz Editora) and is happy to have received several literary awards (Nortear 2016, Branquinho da Fonseca: Literatura Infantil 2019, Jovens Criadores: Literatura 2021).
“IN MY VIEW #1” are four images painted from my “point of view”, that is, from my home territory. My point of view is not just the position of a body in a space, but rather from my body – me – and from my space – a street named after a tree, which winds through one of the mountains of Gerês.
These paintings used the act of vision as a mediator between me and the objects created, investigating and trying to understand painting as pure plastic language and space as an object that one tries to retain. Painting landscapes is a clear mechanism for retaining time.
He studied painting at the Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the FBAUP – Porto, where he received the Incentive and Merit Awards. Since 2017, he has participated in several exhibitions and artistic residencies, both nationally and internationally, with special mention to Chã das Caldeiras (CV), Conceição das Crioulas (BR), Encontrarte (PT), and the Vila Nova de Cerveira Biennial (PT).
In 2021 he co-founded the studio O Bueiro, in Porto; with the exhibition “Desculpa Mãe” he was one of the winners of the AJ award from Millenium BCP and was invited to join the Rótulos de Artista collection at Herdade do Esporão. Since 2018 he has collaborated with the design studios Eduardo Aires and Gémeo Luís.
It echoes without a teleprompter in the collective consciousness that love is blind, is death, or that tears are its smile; that it is a wound that hurts and is not felt. The instinct of survival and rejection of pain seems to fall asleep when the cause is love. Dopamine and oxytocin numb the skin, but the mind does not heal. Through the affective and effective encounter between body and matter, “Wound that hurts and Wound that does not feel” reflects on the addictive nature of love and depicts the human being’s capacity to leave a mark. In a dance in which the body arrives, leaves its mark, and leaves, only the traces of its caresses remain, inscribed in space and memory.
Inês Nêves (1995) is a multidisciplinary artist. She holds a degree in Communication Design (FBAUP, Porto), a master's degree in Textile Art and Design (EKA, Tallinn), and has informal training in acrobatics, dance, graphic arts and art markets. Inês has held exhibitions, performances and artistic residencies in Portugal, Estonia and Sweden, and has participated in international talks, publications and conferences. Since 2019, Inês has been involved in multiple local and international collective projects such as: mais uno +1, Artistas Anónimos, Vent Space Project, Residência Aberta Mart's Garage and Rede de Jovens Investigadores KAIRÓS.
Altarino is a collection of three ceramic pieces. Each sculpture displays its own shapes, colours and motifs, while being part of the same environment. In her relationship with the sacred and in search of another graphic language, the artist developed an alphabet composed of symbols and geometric patterns. Sensitive to the relationship between ritual, belief and architectural objects, she was fascinated by the altars present on every street corner in Naples, which she discovered during a trip. Between figure and architecture, Altarino's ceramics give shape to new archetypes.
Mab.ko is a visual artist based in Porto, Portugal. Trained as an architect in France, her practice is integrated into research on the scale of design and composition. She follows a two-dimensional working protocol in which drawing is the fundamental medium, as well as the question of patterns and archetypal forms. She engages in a systematic and ritualistic approach where each drawing research results in a collection of illustrations. Her body of work takes shape mainly in a series of objects and paintings that are both the apparatus and the work of art itself, coming from direct projections of the illustrations.
A perspective on the vulnerabilities of the current context and contemporary society.
Bullfighting is defended because it is art and culture. An “art” that values suffering, pain and constant torture?
This work was created as a protest against bullfighting, using various symbols such as the muleta cape, the forcado and the “banderillas” stuck in the spine, which are often the last experience the bull has, condemned to the arena.
I was born in England, half Portuguese, half Indonesian. I am currently exploring the creative world after completing my degree in Graphic and Multimedia Design in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. Besides being a Designer, I am also an urban dancer.
Line, stain, body and word.
Traits of Being, of being a Person.
“Ultimately, we do not discover anything new or unknown in the person with mental illness. We find in him the basis of our own nature.”
– Carl Gustav Jung
At the age of 5, in Portimão, he was already drawing what he observed. At the age of 19, in Lisbon, he studied Set Design and Costume Design at Chapitô. At the age of 23, in Amadora, he graduated in Stage Design at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema.
With a graphic diary and pen in hand, she loses track of time. She outlines her path in the performing, visual and plastic arts, and it is here that the sense of community becomes one of her singularities. She is currently a set designer and/or costume designer at Bolha, GTT, KILIG and Teatro O Bando. At 27 years old, she continues to discover the world still with a diary and pen in hand.
Medieval imagery often used playful and humorous elements as a narrative tool and a critique of society and the powers that be. This work defines two moments: in the upper part, a personification of Wrath mounted on a Leopard; in the lower part, a Baroque theatrical composition in the form of a medieval capital, depicting the effects of Wrath and Cynicism on an “upside-down” world.
Moving on to ceramics and taking its history and relationship with toys as a vehicle for representing these worlds. Small theaters of the real and imagined world.
João Salgueiro Baptista (1994), Portuguese. Graduated in Fine Arts in the field of Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. He has a Master's degree in Artistic Photography from the Institute of Cultural Production and Image. Lives and works in Porto. He is a member of Atelier Caldeiras.
Rodrigo Queirós was born and works in Porto, seeking images in the freest way possible through painting, sculpture, drawing and engraving. Graduated in Fine Arts – Sculpture, Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (2016) and Ecole Nationale de Beaux Arts de Paris – degree in Fine Arts (2017).
Hell's Kitchen is a wordless picture book consisting of 10 pages that depict the hopeful escape of a little devil from his culinary hell. The book focuses on the search for rhythm and movement and the rapid construction of the narrative, through sequences that try to provoke in the reader a feeling of urgency and suspense, which ends in a comic-ironic atmosphere. All the work was done in digital format.
Ricardo Rito is an illustrator and concept artist from Alentejo, based in Lisbon, where he currently lives and studies. He graduated in Drawing from the Faculty of Fine Arts of UL, where he is currently completing his Master's degree in the same area. His work, almost exclusively in digital format, focuses on the creation of universes and characters used to compose narratives, varying in style and context, with a notable influence from film culture and video games.
Through a figurative but non-realistic style, this piece presents itself to the viewer as something ambiguous.
In this piece, the armadillo is presented in a vulnerable and dangerous position, but it is smiling and has its eyes closed, thus creating a paradox. The animal ignores its risky situation by adopting a relaxed posture, showing itself to be receptive to the viewer.
The fact that this armadillo's shell has a pattern made up of dots and abstract shapes and that the piece is all white, evokes the idea that it does not belong to the animal world, but rather to the artistic world. Its habitat is a gallery and not vegetation.
Madalena Hipólito, 1997. She has a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon. In 2021, she participated in the group exhibition “Finalistas Pintura 2019.20” at the National Society of Fine Arts, held a solo exhibition “Paródia” at the Casa da Cultura Jaime Lobo e Silva and was awarded an honorable mention at the “1st Biennial of Young Creators of Mafra”. In 2020, she received the painting award “Alunos da Fbaul na Ermida”, at Travessa da Ermida, and in 2019 she participated in the group exhibition “A Ilustração na Obra de Irene Lisboa”, at the Morgado cultural center.
The work is composed of a stone found in rubble, with one of its sides painted with acrylic paint. “Ruderal” is the title of the work, and also the name given to ecological communities that develop in environments disturbed by human action, portraying the sigh of beauty and the symbol of nature’s resistance to human rest.
The artist's research through urban art is to redirect people's eyes to the vegetation that has succumbed to the city, as well as the ruderal plants, bringing color and life to the gray walls.
Giulia Yoshimura (Brazil, 1997), resident in Portugal, with Japanese descent, graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the Federal Institute of São Paulo (IFSP), and currently studying for a master's degree in Visual Arts at the University of Fine Arts of Porto, works as a visual artist and muralist.
Her involvement with art began in childhood, but her professional career began in 2015, when she found her inspiration in flora and, as a result, immersed her production in botanical art. Her work seeks, through a close look at the peculiarities of plant morphology and physiology, to recall the importance of plants and flowers, and their relationship with human beings.
The idea is current and becomes a premise due to its urgency: tourist activity on the islands of the archipelago has been increasing exponentially, which, in a cause-effect relationship, translates (not exclusively) into the urbanization of their natural environments. This invasion has shaken up, albeit gradually, the stillness and apparent stagnation that often comes from the archipelago and peripheral conditions themselves.
It is in this context, so new and intense, that a need (and obligation) arises to review its consequences, both positive and negative – especially in relation to the objectification of the Azorean landscapes by a growing tourist market.
I was born on the island of São Miguel and at the age of eighteen I moved to Lisbon to study Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts. I was selected to represent Portugal at the Art Camp in Andorra (2016) and Malta (2017), both organized by UNESCO, which provided me with other group exhibitions in Europe and the Americas.
In 2019, I exhibited at the National Society of Fine Arts and won the CAT Awards presented at the Casa das Artes de Tavira (Algarve). I am currently holding my 3rd exhibition under my own name, “No futuro também se usaram pincéis” (In the future, brushes would also be used), at Arquipélago – Centro de Artes Contemporâneas.
“Big fish eat little fish” is a critique of the value we currently place on our digital footprint within social platforms. We aspire to be like the “big fish” who “eat little fish”, making us consume and desire to be like them.
Our view of society and what is “trendy” is altered in light of what users of these platforms consider to be correct. We consume at an exorbitant level that is rapidly destroying our planet (fast fashion). We lose our essence and what makes us unique in order to fit into social standards.
Born in Ponta Delgada, I graduated in Communication Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (2016-2019) and took a Postgraduate Degree in UX/UI Design from the same institution (2020-2021).
My works tend to be a reflection of my feelings, doubts and curiosities. Alongside my emotions, I always like to make a social critique and raise awareness in the viewer regarding their attitudes and their performance in society. Inspired by fragmented images that I keep in my memory, I create representations in an abstract way, as if they were a blurred memory.
Where reinvention, deconstruction and irreverence dare to question the past and present.
“TRASH ART GALLERY” proposes a divergent view of the place where works are viewed, as well as of the spectator. The spatial extension of the project was born with the purpose of responding to this premise.
The category in which this work is competing, “Urban Art”, may raise some exhibition questions: “What will be the location and context in which it should be exhibited? Does it make sense to transport the piece?” This was the motto for creating the project.
Through a site-specific intervention, the painting expands into the exterior and urban space, and also transforms it into an object of contemplation.
Rafael Alves, born in Braga, 1998. In 2017, he joined the Degree in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, in the field of Painting.
Nowadays, sculpture plays an increasingly important role in our work. Using waste raw materials, which are often found both in industry and in everyday life, three-dimensional exploration is beginning to emerge.
The objects used derive from other functionalities. The reconstruction and renewal of ideas is present in each piece. The reuse and inclusion of something that was discarded. A new cycle.
The photograph Parcelas (2022) belongs to an extensive body of work that is continually being produced, related to the organization of the territory, its management and transformation. It shows a landscape divided into plots through the construction of walls. The state of abandonment or rest of the subdivision is visible, giving space for vegetation to grow again. A work that appears to be born a ruin, a ruin that multiplies.
Rafael Raposo Pires is a Portuguese visual artist with a postgraduate degree in Contemporary Photography Discourses from FBAUL. His work consists of photographs produced during pedestrian walks in various urban areas.
He began his practice by observing improvised elements that led him to question the distance between urban planning and the way of living in a built space, publishing the photobook Alone Together (2017) on this theme. He has also produced video performances related to the body and its movement in a given landscape, and on the limits of physical wear and tear.
The female body is fragmented, dismantled and disfigured. Disassembled and reassembled. Reorganized to create a new form. In the immensity of the glimpse, up close, one can see, here and there, pieces of body, perhaps of people. But from afar, only the stain created by the pile of former beings.
The mixture of carnal sensuality with a glimpse of nature. The purest and most beautiful visual splash combined with the detail of a more banal beauty. The tangle of silhouettes crowd each other, fallen on the ground.
Freelance artist, model and photographer, with expertise in areas ranging from multimedia to visual arts. Portuguese, 21 years old.
In his academic career, he holds a Degree in Visual Arts and Technologies (2022), where he developed a more attentive look and a work that is more free from prejudice and concern about errors.
She always develops projects with a great critical sense and a hint of irony, seeking to awaken new meanings in other areas within the vast world of arts, always tied to the ideals that move her.
The photograph Parcelas (2022) belongs to an extensive body of work that is continually being produced, related to the organization of the territory, its management and transformation. It shows a landscape divided into plots through the construction of walls. The state of abandonment or rest of the subdivision is visible, giving space for vegetation to grow again. A work that appears to be born a ruin, a ruin that multiplies.
Rafael Raposo Pires is a Portuguese visual artist with a postgraduate degree in Contemporary Photography Discourses from FBAUL. His work consists of photographs produced during pedestrian walks in various urban areas.
He began his practice by observing improvised elements that led him to question the distance between urban planning and the way of living in a built space, publishing the photobook Alone Together (2017) on this theme. He has also produced video performances related to the body and its movement in a given landscape, and on the limits of physical wear and tear.
“Destruction as Construction” is a project based on memory (as a volatile archive of images and experiences), destruction (as a physical gesture but also as disappearance and/or rupture), construction (the process by which I materialized ideas and thoughts), ruins (the aesthetic fascination with them and the connection between destruction and them) and contact (with and between materials).
The house, the home, is a space for building memories and “… each of us carries within us the memory, largely unconscious, of all the architectures we have encountered; and each architecture, even if not in a tangible way”
(Faria, 2022)
Maria João Gonçalves has a head, torso and limbs and is from a place where she does not like to live: Trofa. She began her artistic career at the Escola Artística Soares dos Reis, in Porto, and in July 2022 she graduated in Visual Arts and Artistic Technologies from IPVC. At the moment, she is eager to express her creativity and put it into practice. She has several areas of interest, such as Ceramic Sculpture, Analog Photography, Cinema and Curatorship, which sometimes makes it difficult to find the direction of her artistic career.
Creation is made of matter. To think of matter is to think of essence, the fundamental, the principle.
We observe nature to create new worlds. It is in nature that we find the tools for creation. To create, we observe and transform, we give form a metamorphosis, and it is in the creative process that transformation occurs, giving way to the new, to creation.
This is a representation of plant, mineral, animal and human life, in a cohesion of elements that make the whole landscape and in which the artist's intention with the viewer is to appeal to the observation of the habitat in the search for creative development.
Patrícia Marinho (Guimarães, 1995) explores the possibilities of expression in her works, drawing inspiration from her surroundings. Her pieces frequently depict everyday figures, whether human or organic. The importance of research in the artist's creative process is evident in the influence of the minimalist lines that made it possible to create an easily recognizable style. She currently works as a freelancer in the areas of illustration and graphic design, continuing to be present in the culture of the city of Guimarães.
An interactive system that creates and displays abstract animations is presented. The animations are generated automatically and randomly by combining various mathematical expressions that can evolve over time. The movement detected by a camera, in turn, influences the designs and colors displayed. The aim is to explore the concept of spectator, since both the pixels dance on the screen for the audience and the system observes the movements of the audience. Questions also arise regarding the artistic value of the generated animations. Since the system works autonomously, can we say that it is creative?
Isabel Rego Raposo has a degree in physics and computer science. She grew up on the island of São Miguel in the Azores and now lives in Lisbon, exploring visual art and computer art. Despite her love of drawing since she was a child, her curious mind led Isabel to pursue a degree in physics. Her master's degree, focused on artificial intelligence, culminated in the rediscovery of her love for creative projects, when she investigated computational creativity for her dissertation. Now, Isabel uses the tools acquired in her multidisciplinary career to explore connections between artistic creation and computational processes.
Dog Confrontations of Gestures are the Goals of Morphosis. Relationships that are built with gestures through communication. Sometimes, without words, they take on grotesque forms. A “Dog Confusion” of interpretations. One moves and the other gets scared. Calm down! It’s not intentional, it’s all part of a “treacherous” cultural unconsciousness.
We cling to language, we lose ourselves in gestures. Metamorphosis of animals and humans. Of human hands. How deformed. In reality, hands are no longer of any use. Once, it was another brain. Without hands to measure, it is up to you to decide or I will be left empty-handed. I can't even ask for a kiss on the hand, but what a confusion of gestures.
Always with a toothy little bug behind her ear, Carolina Garfo was born and raised surrounded by the ceramics of Maria Carvalho (mother) and José Teixeira (father). After graduating in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts at UL (2015) and having enrolled in a study program in Artistic Practices at Maumaus (2016), she decided to return to the nest and focus on the charms of ceramics.
Currently based at the Arte da Terra workshop and gallery, Carolina Garfo explores clay, giving voice and space to creatures and environments from her tireless imagination. With pleasure and affection, she has also paid attention to local cultures and traditions, something that she is concerned with valuing and preserving for contemporary generations.
A simple organic cell can become a complex system when multiplied and combined with others. This is who we are: simplicity made complex.
While Derivations of 5 presents itself as an intricate composition, it is composed of only five elements that combine in different ways, like a puzzle with no predefined fitting, creating infinite patterns that are defined, or not, through colors. This is the third composition in a series of four, each with its own narrative that is translated with lines, shapes and colors that open the imagination to different impressions.
Cristiana Santos holds a degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (2015) and a master's degree in Teaching Visual Arts in Primary and Secondary Education from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto (2022). She believes that artistic practices are highly potential tools for developing a more attentive, sensitive, critical and reflective attitude towards reality, bringing this focus to her artistic and educational work. She is also a ceramics teacher for adults and children in her own studio.
Magnetic Fields Reimagined converges the concepts of surrealism and artificial intelligence by producing a reinterpretation of the first surrealist literary work, the work “The Magnetic Fields” (1920) by André Breton and Philippe Soupault, using it as an object of study and content exploration. It was deconstructed through contemporary automatic processes, machine learning mechanisms (RNN and VQGAN+CLIP), which generated, through inputs from the original book and surrealist works, the presented text and the visual contributions of the work, obtaining practically identical results, but different methodologies.
22 year old designer from Porto, passionate about traveling, art and design. I graduated from ESAD in Communication Design in 2022. In 2015, I studied at Escola Artística de Soares dos Reis, specializing in Graphic Design, and in 2018 I studied Architecture at the University of Minho for a semester. In 2019, I started studying at ESAD Matosinhos. Over the last few years, my interest in design has evolved allowing me to explore my identity as a designer. I find inspiration in photography, cinema and music, visual artists and designers, travel and cultures, workshops and lectures.
"Lobacobra" illustrates an invented being: part snake, part wolf or dog. This being, large enough to swallow a person (and with terrifying teeth) is also a fountain in which three humans bathe happily.
This “Lobacobra” can, on the one hand, be seen as a monster, but also as an animal that nourishes life by providing water. And what about the person inside its belly? Has it been swallowed or is it about to be born?
In my illustrations I look for this ambiguity that is also common in fables, where the unprecedented, the comic and the terrifying go hand in hand with the poetic and the marvelous.
Clara Leitão (1995, Lisbon), studied at the António Arroio Art School (2014) and graduated in Textile Design from the School of Textiles & Design, in Scotland (2019). She studied Textiles at the National Institute of Design, India (2018). Her paintings, inspired by stories, dreams and observations of nature, inhabit paper and fabrics.
She was awarded The Clothworkers' Printed Textile Design Prize in London (2019), completed artistic residencies in Denmark, Portugal and Bulgaria and created a public sculpture in a Danish park with primary school children (2022). She lives and works in Estremoz.
Anxieties, challenges and possibilities between the real and the imaginary, about tomorrow.
In a continued reflection on the relationship between the lifestyle of modern man and his habitat, Nature The Artist makes us embark on a journey of constant questioning about our actions and their continuity over time, also forcing us to question our ephemerality in comparison with the prevalence of our material power.
The act of questioning the artistic presumption of an author that we, as spectators, believe we can personify, also forces us to question the very boundaries of what we believe to be unshakable definitions; in the same way that we believe our speciesism or our sovereignty over the surrounding environment to be unshakable.
Tomás João aka Nature the Artist began his artistic practice in 2016, through painting, photography, video and street installation. Nature has always been his source of inspiration and his first steps were already ingrained with elements of the natural world.
But it was only later that he decided to give nature the leading role, thus distancing himself from the authorial role, and allowing that role to be assumed by natural processes that occur without human intervention. Today his work reflects natural phenomena that can be found in caves, forests, the sea, etc.
In a continued reflection on the relationship between the lifestyle of modern man and his habitat, Nature The Artist takes us on a journey of constant questioning about our actions, evoking nature's perspective on ours.
In this piece from the “Tree drawings” series, a tree takes on the role of artist and illustrates the battles that nature wages against an inattentive and egocentric humanity. It not only serves to invoke the interesting aesthetics present in the natural world, but its main intention is to raise awareness in the hope that this can make a difference in solving these problems that have as their main victim the planet Earth and all its fauna and flora.
Tomás João aka Nature the Artist began his artistic practice in 2016, through painting, photography, video and street installation. Nature has always been his source of inspiration and his first steps were already ingrained with elements of the natural world.
But it was only later that he decided to give nature the leading role, thus distancing himself from the authorial role, and allowing that role to be assumed by natural processes that occur without human intervention. Today his work reflects natural phenomena that can be found in caves, forests, the sea, etc.
Devices for a new agenda (The Hunt) is a work about the search for a future.
The sculpture was conceived based on the appearance of a voluminous smoke, but instead of extending vertically towards the sky, it folds into four parts from its own axis and thus remains stagnant on the ground, providing an unknown form together with the materiality of fiberglass and resin.
Its soundtrack is the first track from the album Everywhere At The End Of Time, by The Caretaker, called “It's just a burning memory”.
Fernando Moletta (1994, Brazil) is an Italian-Brazilian visual artist who graduated from the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil) and holds a master's degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). His artistic work stems from the investigation of the burdens of modernism in the present day through the confrontation of temporal notions that speculate on failure, biopolitics, allegorical plasticity and technological noises. These concepts hover like specters that articulate a body of work that is hybrid between video, sculpture and drawing.
It is difficult not to remember the good times. Moments that we keep in our hearts. These are memories that can become painful, either because of longing or loss. However, there is a time for mourning and a time for struggle. To start life over again in the hope of a new day.
Reminiscence seeks to illustrate the duality and divergence of memories. A memory stored unconsciously, capable of being reconstructed by experiences lived over time.
Marisa Constantino graduated in Digital Game Design from IPB in 2017. She worked in advertising and pre-press and currently works in Design and Web Design.
Her artistic skills come from her inherent passion for illustrating narratives and characters, giving them life and movement. She is also interested in 3D modeling and printing and, more recently, has been focusing on new themes such as Artificial Intelligence in the production of Digital Art.
He says that his style is yet to be defined, and that it is constantly evolving, but he seeks to convey ideals and feelings in his art.
The passage of time is the main focus of the project. It can be said that it is even its appearance that creates the works involved. It is based on a questioning of where time begins and when it ends, the search for the moment in which new environments are inserted and new functions are influenced, where the conditions are met for the evocation of something that will become irremediable.
Time seeks to be sculpted, painted and represented in a physical way by materializing the deterioration of an organism, of a being or the process thereof, found in natural elements, specifically mold.
Diana Gonçalves dos Santos was born in 2002, in Lisbon. She is currently studying Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. Her work includes painting, installation and sculpture.
He participated in the group exhibitions “12×12”, at the Santa Clara market (2021), “Small formats” at the Galeria Monumental (2021), and “Common Landscapes” at Quinta da Cruz in Viseu (2020). He currently lives and works in Lisbon.
Plasticine presents itself in a possible scenario of a natural history museum, in which beings (who cross paths at the natural/artificial interface) are photographed by new, unidentified species that appear hundreds of years later, bearing witness to the extreme influence that human beings have left on the planet after their extinction.
Exploitation, genetic modification and disregard for the needs of Mother Nature have resulted in the mass extinction of species and, consequently, the selection of the most resistant ones that now have an artificial and unrecognizable appearance.
Dany Marques Ferreira is 22 years old and has shown himself to be a creative child since he was a child. At the age of 8, he had the opportunity to learn painting, which was his first contact with this world. In secondary school, he attended a professional course in performing arts, which allowed him to integrate human emotions into artistic expression. He is currently studying for a degree in Fine Arts and Multimedia, where he is developing artistic and technical skills and deepening his knowledge in various areas, which allow him to manipulate different materials and programs. As a creator, he is interested in experimenting with various artistic media.
“Earth (hurt)” is an artistic project focused on Global Warming, where the main causes and effects of pollution and degradation of the planet caused by man are explored and represented.
Through 8 macro photographs, divided into the four main systems of the planet: Earth, Water, Ice and Atmosphere, the author creates a visual manifesto for the urgent need to understand the current situation of our planet and to act actively to reduce its destruction. This work is, therefore, an answer to the question: What is Global Warming and what is its impact on the future of the planet and humanity?
Rute Silva is a photographer, videographer, fashion designer and passionate about art and Lisbon, the city where she lives. Since she was young, she has been part of a choir, scouts, youth and volunteer groups, where she went on a mission to Mozambique in 2017 to teach sewing. In 2020, she graduated in Photography and Visual Culture from IADE, and is currently a freelancer, working in photography and video, with a strong passion for documentary photography and photojournalism. Rute believes in the power that art has to spark positive change in others, so her purpose is to be able to share unique stories with every click.
The video art “I, who ignore so many things, know that I ignore one more” is based on a short story by Brazilian writer Vilma Aguiar. The film articulates between the intersections of the real and the virtual to speculate on the ghosts of the past and the future lost through an anonymous present.
Fernando Moletta (1994, Brazil) is an Italian-Brazilian visual artist who graduated from the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil) and holds a master's degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). His artistic work stems from the investigation of the burdens of modernism in the present day through the confrontation of temporal notions that speculate on failure, biopolitics, allegorical plasticity and technological noises. These concepts hover like specters that articulate a body of work that is hybrid between video, sculpture and drawing.
“The Ghost Of” is a project that seeks to give voice to the animal liberation movement through the art of illustration and poetry. It seeks to raise awareness of animal abuse, financed and hidden by entities in power, as well as to expose the practices and lies of the animal exploitation industry.
Each of the illustrations created in a digital context represents the ghost of an animal that was exploited and/or mistreated during its life. It is also accompanied by a poem written from the point of view of that same being.
I am an illustrator, author and graphic designer constantly seeking new challenges and wanting to leave a positive impact on the world through my work. I remain true to my values, both personally and professionally, seeking opportunities that allow me to advocate for causes I believe in through professional projects.
Sunset is understood as the moment of sunset, in which the landscape is slowly invaded and filled by the darkness of night.
The work follows this subtle transition that unfolds in five moments, slowly demonstrating how light influences our perception of space. It also represents a set of fragments of an individual and, at the same time, collective memory, which gives the viewer the opportunity and invites them not only to complement it, but also to inhabit it. Thus, the work becomes an intimate meeting point in this new space-time.
Ana Inácio (1999) was born in Amadora, Portugal. She holds a degree in Multimedia Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts of ULisboa (2017-2020) and a master's degree in Teaching Visual Arts (2020-2022) from the Institute of Education of ULisboa.
In his artistic practice he seeks to explore and articulate themes related to ephemerality, memory and the presence vs. absence binomial, focusing on them especially through photography in its various domains – from digital to analogue and experimental. Since 2021 he has been participating in exhibitions, including Jov'Arte 2021 and the XII International Biennial of Young Art of Vila Verde.
Horizonte is a project under development that addresses the abstract vs. figurative binomials, immateriality and the power of the imaginary.
The work is an archive of landscapes from the Sintra coast. The images show dissipated landscapes, dissolved in scales of color and light. They are traces of reality, fragments that refer to an immaterial and unattainable dimension that only the viewer can complete with his or her own imagination. Through the liminal space in which the work is situated, and the absence of figuration, it becomes possible to unite individual experiences and create a collective memory of these non-places.
Ana Inácio (1999) was born in Amadora, Portugal. She holds a degree in Multimedia Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts of ULisboa (2017-2020) and a master's degree in Teaching Visual Arts (2020-2022) from the Institute of Education of ULisboa.
In his artistic practice he seeks to explore and articulate themes related to ephemerality, memory and the presence vs. absence binomial, focusing on them especially through photography in its various domains – from digital to analogue and experimental. Since 2021 he has been participating in exhibitions, including Jov'Arte 2021 and the XII International Biennial of Young Art of Vila Verde.
Hypotheses for new beginnings, for building places after the future.
I designed this organic textile installation with the aim of rethinking and recreating my connection with the world. My methodological process was based on several practices of attention and appreciation of Nature in urban spaces. At the same time, I collected organic matter, small everyday objects and thoughts, housing them in a base of plant fibers.
I walked, wove, dyed, and stamped the time I intertwined with the places I visited, and planted seeds of memories that I will harvest in the future. Despite being three-dimensional, this diary reads like Western writing: from left to right, from top to bottom.
I was born and raised in Cacilhas, in the house my parents have in the clouds. I finished high school in the Textiles course at the António Arroio Artistic School and I am currently studying Fine Arts.
I'm 18 years old and I've never stopped playing with the miniatures that my grandmother keeps in the living room display case, nor carrying a graphic diary with me.
I am fascinated by lost objects and things that my friends consider trash. My practices of reusing and recycling make me experience and rediscover simple things every day.
Communication is an integral component of the social being that is Man, manifesting itself in multiple means of expression. Its complexity is something we face daily, especially when it fails.
We have all experienced misunderstandings that have resulted in unfortunate situations. Misunderstandings arise from the subjective quality of communication, leaving it vulnerable to analysis by the parties involved.
This work aims, in a comical tone, which refers to the game of Broken Telephone, for the spectator, in an interactive way, to explore the narrative plurality that can result from these different interpretations.
Rita Romeiras (Lisbon, 1996), known as Rita Comedida, is an artist, graduated in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. It is through drawing and painting that she expresses her own experiences, autobiographical and often self-critical — but which at the same time reflect the despair and humor of a generation.
Touching on themes such as precariousness, the creative process or simply the anxiety of existing as a young person in a world on the brink of collapse, the character who is as much Rita as any of us laughs at her own misery in the language of a digital native.
In a society characterized by the desire to prolong youth indefinitely, the idea of the end of a life cycle is seen as a failure and should therefore be avoided. However, if we do not have the ability to define the limits of our own life, how can we relate to it and to ourselves?
The feelings that arose after my father's death, which forced me to reflect on the limitations of human existence, resulted in this project that seeks to portray the way we deal with the loss of someone and with the awareness of our own finitude.
Visual artist from Porto, graduated in Audiovisual Communication Technologies and with a Master's in Artistic Photography.
She has exhibited her work at Encontros da Imagem, CPF, Palácio das Artes, Galeria Municipal Vieira da Silva, among others. More recently, she was selected for a portfolio reading with Jim Goldberg and Alessandra Sanguinetti, for the book “FRESH EYES 2022” by GUP Magazine and participated in the publication of the book “Rostos da Maré”.
Time, memory and absence are the matrix and support of my work, which is characterized by a strong autobiographical aspect.
You See, You Bury, You Master, Human. Something in the display case tells me that what is inside is important. It is organized like me: Head, Heart, Legs. We are both the same Humanity. You Study, You Unearth, You Expose (yourself).
Anthropomorphic motifs are combined in pairs. The being looks at the other, they create together. The Skull and the Plates refer to prehistoric funeral rituals and represent human self-awareness. We explore matter. In the revolutionary pieces, we feel the construction, evolution and improvement of objects throughout history. Art is the Human in contact with himself, with others and with the World.
Born in Almada, she crossed the river every day for 3 years and in 2022 she finished the Artistic Production-Ceramics course at the António Arroio Art School, in Lisbon, renewing the childhood memory of playing with clay in her grandparents' backyard. With an interest in Homo-sapiens, she develops anthropological research. She currently studies Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy, in Rotterdam, where she flew with her sister to discover and redefine fine arts.
Produced in collaboration with A Avó Veio Trabalhar, this piece analyses and reflects on the role of matter in the search for the tactileness of memory, using conceptual languages and a material so domestic and Portuguese that it expands the tactile experience to the emotional one. It rescues a sensorial space in response to the restlessness of reliving the past. In addition to exhibiting a collection of very intimate memories, it also seeks to provide a sharing: stories that prevail between generations, between women, between past and present wisdom, about what the path home means for each of us.
Carolina lives and works between Lisbon and Porto. She was born in 1997. Her work is mainly developed within the fields of nostalgia, memory, and touch – and how these seem to translate into different plasticities. The power of touch and textiles is an inherent part of what she creates and builds. Houses, places, environments. The physical and metaphorical weave was the vehicle she found to organize chaos: be it the weave of fabric, notebooks, or towels – by intertwining material and reality, she creates places, measures time and organizes narrative.
Totem is a set of five sculptures made of paper, sand and acrylic. Each sculpture has its own colours and patterns, giving them a unique and distinct character. The geometric silhouettes are reminiscent of both architectural structures and sacred figures. In fact, by developing the vocabulary of her own mythology, the artist creates a language through a collection of symbols, icons, shrines… Like fetishes, these human-sized sculptures were conceived as objects of protection, sacred emblems, inviting contemplation.
Mab.ko is a visual artist based in Porto, Portugal. Trained as an architect in France, her practice is integrated into research on the scale of design and composition. She follows a two-dimensional working protocol in which drawing is the fundamental medium, as well as the question of patterns and archetypal forms. She engages in a systematic and ritualistic approach where each drawing research results in a collection of illustrations. Her body of work takes shape mainly in a series of objects and paintings that are both the apparatus and the work of art itself, coming from direct projections of the illustrations.
“Studies on property” is a work that arises from a reflection on what possession is. When we talk about possessions, the questions that first arouse interest are those of intellectual possessions, memories and identity. But aren’t objects, borders and fences also something that is intrinsically linked to these memories? In a world where there is increasing conflict when it comes to possessions, whether personal, state or universal, we find here a pause. This notion of pause always seems to come from a common element, nature, which looks serenely at human progress and regression.
Guilherme Proença lives in Lisbon. He holds a degree in Art and Multimedia from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (2017–2020).
As an artistic project, he has been developing photographic studies that contrast strong colors and rigid framing, exploring the relationships between nature and the human footprint.
“Not landscape, not painting” comes from the combination, when using an organic material such as clay, the base material of this work, and other means of creating natural textures resulting from the natural mark that these objects exert on the clay.
In this panel, the mixture between patterns printed by the human hand and other organic materials, such as tree trunks, shells, stones, among others, is noticeable.
A dance between palpable matter and the emptiness of something that has already touched this mass, like a footprint, a trail, a landmark that is our own life.
Inês Paixão, a graduate in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon (FBAUL), spent 1 year in Poland on the Erasmus program.
He has participated in several collective and individual exhibitions and public sculpture works. He focuses on several artistic disciplines, mainly sculpture, photography, painting and public art.
Through her works, the visual artist creates a symbiosis between the human body and the organic bodies found in nature, as a call to attention to the cohabitation between humans and the surrounding environment, thus reflecting her passion, contemplation and admiration.
The paginarium is a visual work (from afar) and a textual work (up close). Covered with book pages (selected, scanned and photocopied), the wall becomes an artistic and literary mosaic on the theme of the night, in which the public is invited to intervene (by underlining, writing, drawing). The Arabian Nights echo the voice of Sherazade. A skilled storyteller who, with the art of words, delays her death in the presence of the sultan. If night is synonymous with danger, Sherazade proves that it is also a space of resistance through art. After all, what texts would we choose to get through another night?
Mafalda Lalanda (Portugal), Elizama Almeida (Brazil) and Elena Soressi (Italy) are creators of interarts projects, on the border between art and literature. They are PhD researchers in Materialities of Literature at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra and collaborate in the experimental humanities laboratory MATLIT LAB. In 2022, they took part in the Coimbra contemporary art biennial (AnoZero) with two artistic interventions. More recently, Mafalda and Elizama created a public reading based on the records of the autos-da-fé of women condemned by the Inquisition.
As art keeps pace with digital, it must also keep pace with the present. Accustomed to looking to the past for patterns for future results, we were very limited when the “perfect” reality was so brutally distorted by a virus and a war in Europe. This work aims to communicate, using Artificial Intelligence, the OUTCOME of the War between Russia and Ukraine – letting the image convey the singularity of the result.
The author, who holds a degree in Tourism Management, is passionate about art, culture and technology. He actively and creatively participates in various personal, professional and academic projects.
A painted wooden sculpture simulating being burned, it is a direct manifestation of German mythology (burning and lignification) through the representation of the purification of matter as a path to the spiritual dimension. Making a transition between sculpture and drawing, this anthropomorphic form seeks to simulate this representation of ash, as rebirth. The work is made by reusing wooden construction profiles, whose poetic material reflects an environmental awareness and which gives the structure (exterior) solidity, which contrasts with its interior emptiness.
Luísa Barros Amaral [1992]. Sculptor, Teacher and Art Educator. Lives and works in Lisbon. Her career includes the Memorial a José Afonso [Lisbon, 2017] and her participation in the group exhibitions (selection) Bienal de Arte Jovem [Vila Verde, 2022]; Art'In Lima – International Exhibition of Contemporary Art [Ponte de Lima, 2022]; XVII Prize for Painting and Sculpture – D. Fernando II [Sintra, 2022]; Corrente de Ar – Vol. I – Príncipe Real [Lisbon, 2021]; I Will Take The Risk, Azan Contemporary | Tomaz Hipólito Studio [Lisbon, 2020], Eidolon, with Rui Freitas Ferreira, at the Geological Museum of Lisbon [Lisbon, 2018].
There are stories hidden in the color that permeates our daily lives that we rarely have access to. When I started photographing around color, I wanted to crystallize the everyday moments that are driven by pigment and elevate them to an artistic level. It's not just about aesthetics, it's also about intention.
Espectro emerged from the desire to take a project that was apparently closed in book format to another level. To open all its doors and windows. It is also the manifestation of the desire to take photography to another register and play with scales.
Matilde Cunha is a young photographer born in 1996 in Porto. She attended the Escola Artística Soares dos Reis where she specialized in photography. Divided between Porto and Lisbon, she studied photography at IADE and completed the advanced course in photography at Ar.co. She currently lives in Porto, where she works as a freelancer. Her work generally reflects a meticulous concern with the relationship between form and color.
