Martinha Maia

Born in São Mamede do Coronado, Martinha graduated in Fine Arts in 2000 from the School of Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha. Her artistic career has evolved since then to encompass performance, video-art, and installations, as well as drawing, textile, and fiber art, which have become her key means of expression.

Martinha’s work is fully embedded in the power of the line, physical and metaphorical. Starting with a moving performance during which she unfolded a long thread in a solitary meditation about the passing of her father, she moved to imbue the line with the evocative power of the story. A storyline that passed through her family history, a line and a thread which slowly evolved to tie in and depict the nature and land around her, a thread which is now progressively making its path back inside, in a slow recognition of her-self.

From 2004 onwards, Martinha has participated in international exhibitions at renown art institutions like the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Casa Velásquez in Madrid, or the Stenersen Museum in Oslo , among others. As a Calouste Gulbenkian scholar, Martinha continues to develop work that defies mediums.

Part thread, part line, part fabric, part mesh, Martinha Maia’s artworks are a life-long reflection that toys with patterns, sequence, and disruption. She departed from a line external to her and transformed it into an all-enveloping dermis, a captivating and mutant organism that constantly reflects how she feels, and through abstraction becomes our universal skin.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022, Anatemnõ: Martinha Maia, Casa-Museu Abel Salazar, Porto
2018, Imaginarius, Centro de Artes de Ponte de Sor, Ponte de Sor
2012, De sensu et sensato, Espaço Tranquilidade, Lisbon
2005, Landscape of Feeling, Politécnica 38, Lisbon
2007, Negro, Agência Vera Cortês, Lisbon
2007, About Baroque, Casa de Velázquez, Madrid

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021, International linen biennial of Portneuf, Quebec, Canada
2020, A kind of place, Armário Gallery, Lisbon
2019, Poetics of the Obtuse, Quase Gallery, Porto
2019, Coleopteros, Soares dos Reis National Museum, Porto
2019, Anything contrary to nature, Chaos, Casa d'arte e ofícios, Viseu
2014, From the fading factory in the Tagus bay, Quimiparque, Barreiro
2013, 30 years of CAM, Ciclos de performance, CAM, Lisbon
2012, De sensu et sensato, Espaço Tranquilidade
2008, A “fluxus” thing 2, Fetish & Consumption at the Stuttgart Academy, Stuttgart
2008, Muyethlek, Museum of Art Maputo, Maputo
2005, I dream about it, Foundation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain, Paris,
2004, 30 artists under 40, Stenersen Museum, Oslo

2022, New exhibition revisits Abel Salazar's scientific method, Anabela Santos, Noticias UP
2018, Exhibition 'Imaginarius' by Martinha Maia at the CAC, Paula Morato, Mediotejo Net
2017, A Face in Fine Arts: Martinha Maia, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation News
2016, Martinha Maia's art dresses the Carlos Alberto Theater again, Margarida David Cardoso, Publico