2023 Portuguese Art Prize

Ana Almeida Pinto’s artistic practice reflects on human motivations, with nostalgia and the relationship between will and power as her driving force. Appropriating the physicality and symbology of the materials with which she works, she finds answers to these intriguing concepts during her creative process. Recently, her practice has developed around the observation of the ‘Territory’ from within its heritage and traditions.

The artist participated in the ‘Amar o Minho’ artistic residency, creating three public art sculptures entitled Batalha das Flores, Bruma and Paisagem Excêntrica, Barcelos, Monção and Vizela (2022). Other notable achievements include her solo exhibition, Fantasmas de Ontem e de Agora, Galeria Municipal, Montemor-o-Novo (2022) and her public art sculpture entitled Penumbra, Art and Sustainability Symposium, Braga (2018).

Ana Lima-Netto graduated in Architecture from the Escola Superior de Belas Artes, Lisbon (1985). Her work reflects on the meaning of life and its transcendence. Philosophical texts are the anchor of ones creative process, as they address issues regarding the relationships and tensions inherent to human nature, our diverse cultures, and our subconscious. Line work is the common defining element of her multi-media practice, which includes drawing, sculpture and installation.

Notable exhibitions include Reminiscence or Nostalgia?, Convent of Espírito Santo Art Gallery, Loulé (2023); From Skin to Skin, Imagine, FITE, Roger Quilliot Museum, Clermont Ferrand (2022); Rosarium, Fátima Sanctuary Museum, Fátima (2022); Rien de Nouveau Sous le Ciel?, Château de Tours, Tours (2021); and From banal to Sublime, António Prates Gallery, Lisbon (2015).

Ana Manso’s work is ingrained deeply in the medium of painting, making the canvas or raw surface a place of encounter between the real world and the imaginary. Free of structure, order, and rationale, the language of abstraction and colour is set against traces of objects from everyday life. Driven by chance and ambiguous by nature, Manso’s works are defined by a repeated sense of appearance and disappearance, favouring instead a sense of spirituality and mystery while escaping modes of everyday life.

Manso recently participated in the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2022), supported by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. She has exhibited regularly in Portugal and internationally, including: Ninguém. Só eu. Centro de Arte Oliva, São João da Madeira (2022); Hier, Aujourd’ hui, Demain, Mudam Luxembourg (2020); YEMA, Matadero Madrid (2018) and Yo-yo, Contemporary Projects, Museu de Serralves, Porto (2017).

The work of Ana Santos (b. 1982) is linked to the appropriation of found objects, which are subjected to simple acts of manipulation through a process of discovery where chance often plays an important role. Bege Modigliani belongs to a group of recent works made from pipes and other components of the exhaust system of automobiles. The artist thus creates anthropomorphic works that generate a latent ambiguity between being ready-made and objects built from scratch.

Ana Santos (n. 1983) was the recipient of the 2013 EDP Foundation New Artists Award. Her solo exhibitions include Anatema, MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technologie (2019); vis-à-vis, Visual Arts Centre, Coimbra (2022); and Spring-Summer Collection, Culturgest, Lisbon (2023).

To create Immutable Laws (I), Bilbao starts with a film negative and makes an intervention on its surface, erasing the original image. By doing so, she hopes to initiate a dialogue between the erasure and some of the remaining traces from the original image that are now preserved. Always related to Nature, these traces present themselves as the only surviving element and allow Bilbao to expose Nature’s immutable laws in the face of human presence, which in this series are always erased or swallowed up into the whirl of Nature’s dance.

Bilbao has exhibited widely, including at Photo Basel, Basel (2022); International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2022); J’ai rêvé d’une fleur qui ne mourrait jamais, Curiosa section, Paris Photo, Paris (2021); Blast Effects, Opening section, Arco Madrid, Madrid (2021); and the 13th edition of EDP Foundation’s New Artists Award, MAAT, Lisbon (2019).

Andreia Santana’s practice explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into sculptures and installations. She reflects on how these politicized materials form our understanding of the social constructs of archaeology, history and gender. Both attractive and disturbing, Santana’s sculptures, such as in praise of laziness, appear as hybrid structures. Inspired by animal survival strategies such as camouflage and ecdysis, as well as tactics of feminine seduction and protection, Santana’s oeuvre proposes a chimera beyond the categorizations of genesis, gender and habitat.

Santana is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the EDP Prize, MAAT, Lisbon (2022); the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Visual Arts Grant for Residency Unlimited, New York (2017); and the NOVO BANCO Revelação Prize (2016). Her work, Overlapses, Riddles & Spells, was recently commissioned for BoCA, CCB, Lisbon (2021).

Carla Filipe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice questions the permeable relationship between art objects, culture, and activism. Anchored in drawing, personal experiences and autobiography as an experimental archive of contemporaneity, Filipe builds a form of social portrait and, simultaneously, self-portraiture. By applying anthropological methodologies, she collects, interviews, and documents the traces of individual and collective narratives, critically questioning conventional discursivity on the recent past and present. Essentially, she explores transversal concepts such as territory, property, memory, identity, and representation.

Notable exhibitions include In my own language i am independente, Serralves Museum, Porto (2023); Confissões de uma baptizada, Centro de Artes do Arquipelago, Azores (2022); da cauda à cabeça, Berardo Museum, Lisbon (2014); Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2016); and Manifesta 8, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Murcia (2011).

Pink & Orange is inspired by Goethe’s quote, “colour is the expression and suffering of light.” Forming part of the ‘Depois da Imagem’ series, Pimenta created the works following a study of colour and light driven from error. The images depict gradations of light that emerge from the darkness and began to shift. Nothing is in focus, so there is a feeling of ecstasy or rapture, creating proximity to painting by using textured paper.

Pimenta has exhibited throughout Portugal, including at This Side of Nowhere, Gallery Nuno Centeno, Porto (2022); Escola De Libertinagem, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon (2022); Poltch, Museu do Caramulo, Caramulo (2019); Almost Famous, Gallery Nuno Centeno, Porto (2019); and Suck & Blow, The Switch, Lisbon (2019) and most recently, Depois da Imagem, Labor AGO Pavilion, Mexico City (2023).

Cássio Markowski’s multimedia practice uses archives, image banks and flea markets to document sociocultural aspects of Afro-Brazilian history and the African diaspora. He gathers old botany manuals, family photographs and magazine images to build a magical visual universe. In Markowski’s world, nature emerges as a metaphor for harmony, healing, and transformation.
Concelhos para meu eu quando jovem uses detailed manufacture, graphite pencil and gouache to investigate family relationships, their influences, and contradictions within the cultural construction of Brazil. Giving rise to an act of resistance, he reflects on the idea of childhood, masculinity, and national identity.

Markowski has exhibited internationally, including at A Noite Não Adormece nos Ohos das Mnulheres, AKAA – Also Known as Africa, Paris (2023); at ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair; Lisbon (2023); Havia Um Tempo em Que Eu Podia Ser Tudo, This is Not a White Cube Gallery, Lisbon (2022/2023); and at Curitiba International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Curitiba (2018).

Ataíde started Mountain House #14 in lndia, where she worked in a stone factory along with 60 workers who made sculptures of gods and goddesses. Her work is often created on her travels around the world, with one of her practices being mountain climbing. ln this sculpture, the house has a mountain as a roof. One can enter the house through a small door or crack. ln the excavated interior of the piece, one can find the refuge of a house or a cave. ln this sense, the mountain can either be seen as a climb or as a shelter.

Notable exhibitions of Ataíde include ?A Terra ainda é redonda?, Museum Nacional de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon (2023); Un viaje extraordinario, Galeria Beto-Galsterer, Lisbon (2023); f/ efecto espejo de los océanos, Palácio Cibeles, Madrid (20·22); Respiração Boca a Boca, MIEC, Museu lnternaciorl<31 de Escultura, Sto Tirso (2022); Todo y solo Luz, in Todo y solo Luz: Centro de Arte Faro de Cabo Mayor, Santander (2021).

Art Now More Than Ever forms part of a body of work in which Rees uses the techniques of marbling often associated with children’s art, hobbyist art, and artisanal bookmaking. Due to the nature of marbling as a technique, the visual outcome of the works is both highly individuated and contains a degree of unpredictability. Rees has used various marbling techniques directly onto canvas, these variations are further informed by the different types of canvas and linen and the manner in which the material is folded in preparation.

Rees has exhibited throughout Europe, including at Aleatory Compensatory, Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2022); World Art Trends 1982, Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto (2021); La Collezione Impermanente #1, GAMeC, Bergamo (2018); Les règles du jeu / The rules of the game, Casa do Povo, Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); and Kelp, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (2013).

The series, of which The Boat Trip (Departure) is part, is not about anything. If you ask me, and I have already been asked, what these images are about, I wouldn’t be able to answer. They are not, like previous works of mine, about the Shoah or about the impossibility of photographing a window or a bowl, nor about the time that flows or the memories of tomorrow. These photographs are not variations on the same subject. They do not show a city or a group of people, in fact, there are architectures nor faces in these photographs, they are images of a world, neither before nor after human presence, but of a world despite people.

Notable achievements include exhibiting at the Centre Photographique, Rouen (2022); Jean-Kenta Gauthier, Paris (2022); Pavilhão Preto, Museu da Cidade, Lisbon (2022); Pavilhão Branco. Museu da Cidade, Lisbon (2019); and Musée Eugène Delacroix, Paris (2018), amongst others.

Caring takes inspiration from activist Maya Angelou’s quote, “as you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” This metaphor depicts hands as something to cure, to take care, to give and receive love. Krtsch questions what caring means to her, especially through body language and physical gesture. Hands are a common motif in her work, representing fear, happiness, doubt, comfort, and pain. In Caring, she painted hands of people from different ethnicities as a symbol of freedom, equality, diversity and acceptance. In essence, caring hands are an extension of our heart.

Krtsch’s notable exhibitions include Looking for Eden, Gallery Belo-Galsterer, Lisbon (2023); Take me to the dawn, Gallery Salgadeiras, Lisbon (2022); and À procura de um outro continente, Gallery Fernando Santos, Porto (2020). She has also participated in the Egeac annual programme, Lojas com histórias (2023) and an artistic collaboration for the bilingual Edition of E.E. Cummings; Erotic Poems (2022).

Round (around) epitomises the random and performative element of Pimentão’s practice. It is neither a pencil drawing nor a delicate hand drawing as one might imagine at first glance: the work is in fact created from a set of vigorous gestures involving strong physical efforts. Round (around) was created blindly, by means of a simple device that vigorously shakes repurposed graphite fragments from other works onto paper. The scale of this drawing makes its production an almost athletic action, but with a choreographic and sound component. The graphite impact sounds like a storm, to which the artist is deeply connected.

Pimentão has exhibited at Collection Frédéric De, Goldschmidt, Cloud Seven, Brussels (2021); Disequilibrium Displacement, IMMA – Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015); Oblique Gravity, Yvon Lambert, Paris (2013); Papier XL, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2016). His work has been published in Drawing Backwards, Monographic Exhibition, FRAC Rouen Normandie, Rouen (2020).

Direitos da Natureza #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #8, #9 is a drawing installation composed of seven phrases assembled in a block. The phrases are drawn in green pencil on scraps of paper repurposed from other works and are quoted from ‘Derechos de la naturaleza: Biocentric ethics and environmental policies’ by Eduardo Gudynas. The work combines themes that have long characterised Albergaria’s work, linking cultural, historical, and economic topics to nature in its Western tradition.

Albergaria has exhibited in Nature Abhors a Straight Line, Culturgest, Lisbon (2021) and at Palacio da Galeria, Tavira (2022). Her work has been published in Nature Abhors a Straight Line, Culturgest, Mousse Publishing (2021).

Untitled – among the wreckage – truce from 12 to 15 is a response to the unsustainable current reality: that we have war on our doorstep once again. The dismay and incredulity caused by our collective impotence in the face of new, daily images of destruction and pain are materialised in this image. The work also draws reference to Susan Sontag’s essay entitled ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’. The work was created with real objects, collected and arranged in the studio. Having been developed in the safety of a studio, various debris, shards and objects recreate or evoke the intolerable. In this no man’s land, between remains and fragments, a strip of witnesses stand by and observe, protected in their frames like side characters of an ancient altarpiece.

Notable exhibitions include Mille-Fleurs, Galeria 111, Lisbon (2018); Estranhos Jardins, Museu das Artes de Sintra, Sintra (2022); and Pintura sem Fim, Brotéria (2023).

Saint Sebastian of Acupuncture is a sculpture presented is an Arte Sacra’s figure of Saint Sebastian pierced by acupuncture needles instead of the conventional arrows. The work refers to a century’s old effort of the West to impose its cultural and religious values onto the Orient, and Orient’s steady resistance to accept it. Bessmertny’s artist statement is: “Art collectors of the world, unite! Artists of the world, please don’t!”

Notable exhibitions include Sunday Morning Forever, Galeria Monumental, Lisbon (2023) and One of You and All of Them, Rossi & Rossi, London (2013). Bessmertny also exhibited at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice (2007).

Typical of Gediz’s style, Troubleshooter depicts a simple arrangement with everyday items that accumulate in her studio. Reflecting the light and shadows of their environment, her still lifes do not give themselves away easily. Verging on abstraction, they instil a sense of being unable to see what’s right in front of you. Gediz named this piece Troubleshooter during the final application of paint because its surface had gained an exceptionally smooth, almost perfect texture. Despite this, she searched for irregularities, only managing to stop upon realising that she could pass this task onto the viewer.

Gediz has exhibited internationally, including at Missing Cat, Purdy Hicks Gallery, London (2023); Cosa Mentale, L’Atlas, galerie des mondes, Paris (2022); ThisPlay, ARTER Contemporary Art Museum, Istanbul (2022); and Layer from Background, Edifício EPUL de Bartolomeu da Costa Cabral, Martim Moniz, Lisbon (2022).

Nobre questions ideas about nature, survival, and the implications of the empty space between the originally observed subject and it’s drawn and displayed rendition. At its core, his work investigates ideas of nature and symbolism. Using diverse media, he explores the public and private exposition of objects and drawings, and their relationship with humanity. Underneath #2 forms part of a series that Nobre created to achieve a strong sense of depth and superficiality. His use of different techniques and mediums allow the audience to look for familiarity in the elements while engaging in a kaleidoscopic journey.

Nobre has exhibited internationally, including at the Galeria Rooster Factor 41N-9W (2013), New York and at the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale (2007). In 2021 Nobre participated in two group shows: Le Dos au Sol. Borderline Agency in the Luxemburg Ville and Rehearsal For a Community, MAAT, Lisbon. In 2019 his work was included in From Other Spaces, Municipal Gallery, Porto and Studiollo, Eugénio de Almeida Foundation, Évora.

As a painter, Costa believes that in order to see, he needs to paint. He is inspired by his intimate relationships with others and with the world. According to the artist, painting an image that already exists is a way of accentuating its presence and importance, akin to looking at something twice to better understand it. Essentially, Costa attempts to produce paintings that question what is rendered on the surface of the canvas.

Notable exhibitions include Janeiro-Dezembro, Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisbon (2023); Laranjas, Fundação Carmona e Costa, Lisbon (2022); Kopie, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna (2020); Eco/Echo, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2019).

Santos explores the expansive possibilities of painting and drawing, especially with site-specific interventions, allowing for a close relationship with the exhibition space. Side Effects forms part of a series of drawings inspired by the artists’ organisation of her archival materials at her studio and home. The revisiting of these materials collected over the years, such as exhibition sheets, allowed Santos to develop drawings built from the contents of exhibition hall sheets visited between 2000 and 2023. In the series, she appropriates excerpts from texts describing the “effects” caused by the works on display.

Santos has exhibited internationally, including at Histórias de uma Coleção, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2023); Variations Portugaises, Centre d ́Art Contemporain Meymac, Meymac (2018); Only Connect, Bloomberg Building, New York (2008); Prémios EDP 2007, Central Eléctrica do Freixo, Porto (2007); and 7 artistas ao 10o mês, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (2005).

When working in his studio, Caeiro is always drawn to thinking about the connection between painting and sculpture. To create Ensaio para um Volume Plano #7, Caeiro begins by photographing one of his sculptures, which he then renders in paint. In doing so, he uses paint to reconceptualise the original sculpture and reanalyses the relationship between two- and three-dimensionality. This method allows him to consider the destructibility and reconstruction of a theoretic object: attempting to achieve the best possible dialogue between them. According to Caeiro, painting in this matter gives him a ‘3-in-1 medium’, allowing him to reconsider the medium of paint itself.

Caeiro has participated in multiple solo and group presentations, including Light Monument // Sq. Feet, Ponces + Robles, Madrid (2017); Mikado, BetaPictoris Gallery, Alabama (2016); Down side up (Lurixs-Baró), Galeria Baró, São Paulo (2011); and O Palácio, Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Guimarães (2020). He came first place in the Ariane de Rothschild Painting Prize, Lisbon (2005). He was shortlisted for The 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize.

Mountain of Heath and Rock rose is inspired by the film Las Hurdes, Tierra sin Pan (1936) by Luis Buñuel, in which the characters are both the inhabitants and the landscapes of the titular Spanish region, close to the Portuguese border. Based on a single frame of the film, the drawings show a mountain resembling a great wall. Capelo has drawn this mountain insistently, over a long period of time, for only by working, in front of the paper, can a true search take place. According to the artist, everything that happens on this planet leaves a trace, a testimony that is always shifting, always in peril, and always occurring in the present.

Notable exhibitions by the artist include O dia já fecha as portas, MAAT – Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisboa (2023); Vento Espesso, Casa-Museu Guerra Junqueiro, Porto (2022); Do Planalto se dobra a montanha, na Galeria do Palacete Viscondes de Balsemão, Porto e Zé dos Bois, Lisboa (2022); Tudo o que eu quero – Artistas portuguesas de 1900 a 2020, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa and cccod | Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré, Tours (2021/22). Capelo was the winner of the FLAD Drawing Prize, Lisbon (2022).

In COSMIC DEBRIS #6 (Coachella rock) 2022, Cera questions our reality and unconscious. By creating dreamlike scenes, the work plays with encounters between a suspended obscure object and a landscape, pairing strangers in time and space: two moments converged into a single event. Inspired by René Magritte’s ‘Le Château des Pyrénées’ (1959), the work explores photography in a post-Instagram and AI-driven world. Essentially, Cera aims to break free from traditional notions of what photography is and can be, by exploring new techniques and approaches.

Notable exhibitions include Janela Infinita (Infinite Window), Galeria Miguel Nabinho, Lisbon (2022); Luzes Distantes (Distant Lights), MAAT, Arquitectura e Tecnologia, Lisbon (2022); As Quedas (The Falls), Convento de São Francisco, Coimbra (2022); Symphony of the Unknown II, Escola das Artes, Porto (2021); and Histórias de uma Coleção, Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2023). Nuno Cera has also been the recipient of various residencies around the world.

Family window & family Sculpture is created from iron window frames taken from the artist’s former workshop at a dismantled plastics factory called SIMALA. These “windows” were manipulated in order to build a progression of openings that allow, on the one hand, the recognition of the initial object and, on the other, an awareness of the transforming capacity starting from a pre-existence.

Notable exhibitions include Inhabitants ou imitar o andar, CAI Galeria 3+1, Lisbon (2023); Pelo que não se vê, CAI Galeria do Instituto Politécnico de Tomar, Tomar (2023); Amanhã é muito tempo, integrada no Ciclo Desenho como pensamento, Biblioteca Municipal Manuel Alegra, Águeda (2023); Um entre nós, Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo (2022); Tenho a vista cansada, Galeria Mul.ti.plo, Rio de Janeiro (2022). He was shortlisted for The 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize.

Plexus Solaire II invites the viewer to identify, mirror, and soothe themselves. The work presents visible forms of healing, a term often associated with practices that involve natural remedies, rituals, or other therapies, and that fall outside conventional sciences. Whether it be a heart-shrinking or heart-stabbing sensation, pain in the solar plexus can be the expression of buried emotions that manifest themselves through somatisation. The links between these terminologies are weaved in a plastic vocabulary that oscillates between figurative elements and abstract composition, to reveal a hybridization of emotions in vivid and symbolic colours.

Notable exhibitions include Je est un autre, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade (2023); Cosmogonie, Cobra Museum, Amsterdam (2023); Through the eyes of my Ancestors, ARCO Madrid, Galeria Foco, Madrid (2022); and Corde Vocali, Rx Gallery, Paris (2020). She has participated in a residency at Zinsou Foundation, Ouidah (2018).

Graças I, II, III were permanent public artworks developed for ESPORO Projecto Cultural, a free access, artistic project aiming to develop the cultural scene of Portugal: in both its natural and social contexts. Referencing the importance of connection with nature and its bounty, Graças I materialized following the artists’ exploration of the ‘Three Graces’. In the piece, Gramaxo harks back to the relationship between the series “Equivalents” by Carl André and John Constable’s cloud paintings between 1822 – 1823. Similarly, the artistic object or monument is decontextualized in a natural-artificial contrast, leading the viewer to a state of altered perception.

Gramaxo has participated in public art projects, including Graças I, II, III, ESPORO Cultura, Figueiró, Ansião and Proença a Nova (2022); and Dimensions #6, Cleve Carney Museum of Art and College of Dupage Chicago, Illinois (2023). Notable exhibitions include Contrivance# 4, Paviljoen een hat Water, Rotterdam (2022) and Beyond Architecture, Casa da Arquitectura Matosinhos (2023).

Drawing takes on a central role in the artist’s work and it is through it that she feels and thinks. More than the materialization of an idea, drawing is the way in which Esgaio finds answers to the questions weighing on her mind. Crafted with graphite, charcoal and black soft pastel, her work has a figurative language that aims to approach abstract concepts such as the passage of time, the human condition, memory, and identity. Matter is a set of drawings that presents itself as an awareness of our place, of our connection to the ground, placing the weight, density of masses and the space they occupy as unavoidable constants in Man’s relationship with reality.

Notable exhibitions include Point Zero, Estação Elevatória a Vapor dos Barbadinhos, Museu da Agua, Lisbon (2023); 180 days, Estação Elevatória a Vapor dos Barbadinhos, Museu da Água, Lisbon (2022); O mar não é redondo, Sala dos Barcos, Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon (2021); and Contemporâneos Extemporâneos, Galeria Fernando Santos, Porto (2021). She was shortlisted for The 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize.

Vasco Araújo uses a diverse range of media to create a unique artistic language. Through deconstruction and reconstruction of behavioural codes, Araújo reflects on the relationship between the subject and the world. Araújo uses all the art forms at his disposal to reconsider social norms: performance of the body, the artists’ own voice (having practiced lyrical chant), gestures, and language. “Out of the past” #6 is about intimacy, memory, love and domestic relationships. It is inspired by a line from Adília Lopes’ poem, ‘Out of the past’ (1999).

Araújo’s work has been widely exhibited, including in Under the Influence of Psyche, The Power Plant, Toronto (2014); Debret, Pinacoteca do Estado de S. Paulo, São Paulo (2013); Em Vivo Contacto, 28º Bienal de S. Paulo, São Paulo (2008); Experience of Art, La Biennale di Venezia, 51st International Exhibition of Art, Venice (2005); and Dialectics of Hope, 1st Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2005). He was shortlisted for The 2022 Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize.

Mota’s work revolves around the politics of the body, exploring and reflecting upon it as a constructive methodology and a medium for conceptualisation. Membrane forms part of a group of work that evokes imagery of the human body. While this drawing does not intend to represent a particular body part, the result of the artist’s repeated gesture nevertheless resembles a spine. Rendered in oil paint, the gesture’s imprints are continued by the absorption of the oil by the paper, long after the hand has stopped working.

Mota’s work has been presented at SEM CORPO/ DISEMBODIED, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum, Porto (2022); Phantom Sensation, Sismógrafo, Porto (2023); HAZE, Appleton Associação Cultural, Lisbon (2023); and Esfíngico Frontal, Gallery Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2023).