From Landscape to Map is the title of Mafalda Santos’ solo exhibition, which marks the start of a series of exhibitions curated by the artist herself. This project establishes a dialogue between Mafalda Santos’ artistic practice and the vision of guest curators, fostering a critical and in-depth analysis of the artist’s creative journey over the last two decades.

In this first chapter, the exhibition brings together 11 acrylic paintings on canvas, created across five distinct periods. These works explore painting through geometric abstraction, with an emphasis on elements such as the line and simple shapes — the circle, the square and the rectangle — integrated into a dynamic of chromatic variations that oscillate between the presence and absence of colour.

This formal dialogue results in the construction of new pictorial realities which, at the same time, reflect and reconfigure reality, offering a multiplicity of interpretations that allude to the complexity of the contemporary world.

The works on display occupy an ambiguous territory, between traditional painting and computer graphics, evoking references such as pixelation and visual codes characteristic of the digital universe.

This ambivalence allows for multiple interpretations, navigating between micro and macro scales, and creating zones of light and shadow, of visibility and invisibility, of legibility and illegibility. Thus, the works offer a multifaceted visual and conceptual experience, underpinned by the richness and density of their layers of meaning.

The exhibition cycle now beginning aims to reflect on recurring themes in the artist’s work, such as the idea of networks and interconnectivity. It also addresses the relationship of contemporary human beings with a world shaped by information networks, which redefine the spaces and times of interaction with others and with our surroundings.

Centred on the fields of painting and drawing, Mafalda Santos’s artistic practice explores the expanded possibilities of these languages, using a visual vocabulary that includes diagrams, maps, timelines, spatially arranged words, lines, colours and simple geometric shapes. This visual repertoire allows her to materialise and conceptualise the idea of a network, whilst also focusing on specific contexts.

Through painting and drawing, the artist develops tools to think about and sensitively understand the world around her.

Belonging to the last generation to grow up in a largely analogue world, Mafalda Santos’s development as an artist coincided with the introduction of technology into everyday life, the widespread access to the internet and the emergence of social media. These transformations inform her work, which addresses the dichotomy between the digital and the manual, reflecting on the relationship between knowledge, memory and the narratives that shape an individual’s identity and positioning.

Although Mafalda Santos’s visual language frequently incorporates elements associated with the digital realm — such as pixels, file folders or graphics — her production process is essentially manual. This method involves the organic repetition of forms and gestures, where every decision or hesitation of the hand, every imperfection in the “surface of the painting”, imbues it with singularity and humanises the creative process. By introducing into her practice chance, error and accident—elements that lend subjectivity and expressiveness to her works—the artist questions the idea of the algorithm, understanding it as a defined set of actions for solving problems.

In the coming chapters of this cycle, the artist will revisit various moments of her creative journey, bringing together works from different exhibition projects, some presented for the first time in new contexts and spaces. These exhibitions will allow for the establishment of connections and new interpretations of her work, grouping the pieces into clusters with formal and conceptual affinities. In this dialogue between older and more recent works, not only paintings and drawings will be presented, but also sculptures, murals, installations, collages and assemblages, resulting in a transition from two-dimensionality to three-dimensionality and the creation of object-paintings.

Each of these public reviews will provide an opportunity to deepen reflection on the work, fostering debates with artists, curators, researchers and the general public. Through lectures, talks, guided tours and critical texts, new conceptual and theoretical frameworks for Mafalda Santos’s work will be produced.

Throughout this cycle, the artist will develop a new body of work, to be presented in the final exhibition. All documentation of the exhibitions, the archive of 20 years of artistic practice and the critical reflections produced by multiple commentators will be compiled into a publication, which will serve as a record and archive of this ambitious and deeply investigative project.

www.mafaldasantos.pt

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Galeria Presença, Rita Alves, Dear class of the PhD in Fine Arts

2024/25, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto

CREDITS

Direction Manuela Matos Monteiro and João Lafuente

Artistic Direction José Maia

Gallery Assistant Luísa Rosas da Silva

MAFALDA SANTOS Mafalda Santos (Porto, 1980) lives and works between Porto and Vila Nova de Cerveira. She is an artist, curator, and programmer. She graduated in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto in 2004, with a specialization in Fine Arts, Painting. She was a Professor of Visual Arts and Artistic Technologies at the Higher School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo. She has maintained an exhibition career in Portugal and abroad since 2001, with notable exhibitions such as “Histórias de uma coleção” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2023; “Variações Portugaises” at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Meymac, France, in 2026; and “Portugal Agora, A Propos des Liex d'Origine” at the MUDAM Centre D'art Moderne Gran-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, in 2008. and “Café Portugal,” a group exhibition, an initiative of the Presidency of the Republic, in Évora, Bratislava, and Ponta Delgada, between 2008 and 2009. In 2007/2008, as a fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD), she completed the Location One artist residency in New York, was selected for the EDP New Artists Prize 2007, and in 2005 for the exhibition “7 artists in the 10th month” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Her work is included in the Portuguese collections of António Cachola, the EDP and Ilídio Pinho Foundations, Grupo RAR, PLMJ Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon City Council, Porto City Council, and the State Art Collection, as well as in various national and international private collections. Between 2002 and 2007 she was co-director of the independent space PêssegoPráSemana, in Porto. Between 2013 and 2018, she managed the Moinho da Fonte Santa artistic residency program in Alandroal, Alentejo. She is responsible, with Susana Gaudêncio, for the Pessoa Jurídica project, organizing events and exhibitions since 2012. Currently, she is part of the Curatorial and Programming Team of the Cerveira Art Biennial Foundation.

www.mafaldasantos.pt