(2020 Update: In 2020, I developed a series of paintings based on the original drawings, which were presented on 10th June 2019 at the Portuguese Embassy in Warsaw as part of Dia de Portugal, The Day of Portugal, hosted by Ambassador Luís Cabaço.) In the beginning of 2018, I embarked on a slightly experimental project: a series of portraits of…

One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things. — Henry Miller from Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957) Wiping sweat off my forehead in +30 temperatures, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks unpacking and organising my stuff in Amadora, where just I’ve moved for the summer. I was humming along to Kaiser…

I recently went to see the Just After the War exhibition at Zachęta Gallery in Warsaw. The exhibition, described as an „attempt to answer the question as to how the complicated social moods and political tensions in post-war Poland found their expression in the visual arts, photographs, film and also architecture and design”, offered a great deal of visual delight….

The Jing Jin City and Miracle Village exhibition, which opens at Daniel Blau gallery in January 2015, is likely to arouse discussions. Very important, and quite possibly very heated discussions. The gallery has invited two very ambitious and courageous artists. Andi Schmied and Sofia Valiente, who were among the winners of 5 Under 30 competition in 2013 and 2014 respectively, are more than just photographers…

I am not a fashion buff. I don’t watch catwalk shows, adjust the length of my skirts to what’s in this season, nor buy Vogue. But I love fashion. I grew up surrounded by women’s magazines and the smell of Givenchy perfume, and developed an appreciation for quality and uniqueness (thanks, Mum!). I avoid shopping on the high street, as…

Last weekend I went to the National Gallery to see the Making Colour exhibition. It’s one of those exhibitions I could easily have missed, had it not been recommended to me by a friend, since its advertising is not especially enticing. But I’m very glad I went for it’s a really good show: inspiring, informative and joyful. Everyone who marvels at the…

When the curators of the Comic Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK exhibition decorated the entrance hall with a mix of quotes which included Julie Burchill’s boldly negative statement “Comic books for adults is a complete contradiction in terms, as anyone who reads comics is not an adult and should have their voting rights removed ASAP,” they knew how…

“I find it difficult  to write each day, but if I don’t I’m swamped with guilt. Where does the compunction come from?,” wrote Derek Jarman in a diary he started after moving to the Prospect Cottage on the bleak coast of industrial Dungeness. The diary, called Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman, was first published by Century in 1991, three years…

On Easter Sunday, my boyfriend and I decided to brave the atrocious weather and go to Tate Modern to see the newly opened Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition. On this particularly cold, grey, and gloomy Sunday afternoon, we looked forward to seeing the late works of an artist known as the “wild beast” of colour. I’ve seen Matisse’s paintings at…

I was very thrilled when a few weeks ago I saw the announcement of the Ruin Lust exhibition at Tate Britain for I do have a penchant for images of decay and destruction. The exhibition, which includes over 100 works by both past and present artists, was promising a journey through “mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art from…

A month after the first Show & Tell, the time has come for the second part. February was all about painting and parading with oil-stained hands and dirty fingernails concealed underneath black varnish. The time went quickly, as it always does when one gets immersed in such intense work as painting. Today I would like to share elements of that…

Max Ernst, the author of a collage graphic novel, Une Semaine de Bonté (1934), once said: “Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them.” Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of seeing an exhibition devoted to the work of Hannah Höch, a German…