Working essentially with drawing and oil painting, Mariana Malheiro develops works whose narratives focus on human relationships and social conventions, often depicting moments of communion and leisure, with the female figure as the protagonist. Whether it's through the representation of women in everyday actions, or through groups of beings gathering together, Mariana's work shows us both moments of excess and moments of serenity, where the idea of decadence and overcoming are present in playful environments that are stimulated by figures traced over dense layers of fresh paint with the same looseness as a sketch, seeking an approximation to drawing.
The paintings presented in this exhibition at Galeria Belard propose a representation of the female figure where there is pleasure or pain, without passivity, and where the figures are comfortable with the absence of any other presence, without that ideal of perfectly charming and domestic creatures. - “the angels of the house” - as Virginia Wolf describes them.
Mariana Malheiro (b.1995) studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Lisbon and at the Kunsthochschule Kassel (Germany).
She has had solo exhibitions at Espaço Cultural Mercês (2024), Casa do Comum (2024) and Rua das Gaivotas 6 (2022). He has participated in group exhibitions at Galeria Monitor (2024), Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes (2024), Brotéria (2023), Arquipélago - Centro de Artes Contemporâneas (2022), Galeria Alga (2021), Galeria Valbom (2019), Pavilhão 31 do C.H.P. Júlio de Matos (2017), among others.
Her work has been included in publications such as Umbigo Magazine 88, DOSE 11, and Portuguese Emerging Artists 2023. She is currently in artistic residency at Kunstraum LLC in New York, with the support of the Luso-American Development Foundation.
Her work is represented in the collection of the Luso-American Development Foundation and in private collections in Portugal and Brazil.