Mafalda Figueiredo

Biography

Mafalda Figueiredo (b.1991, Lisbon) is a figurative painter. She graduated from the Fine Arts University of Lisbon in 2013 and has subsequently lived and worked in Berlin, London and Vienna where she's now based.


Figueiredo paints surreal spaces where we witness the subjects bare and exposed, in a moment of self-reflection. 
She’s interested in the layers of the self that are not visible, the ones that come out in dreams and free-associative thinking and how they connect to lived experiences in the realm of the real.



Through figurative painting Figueiredo aims to build a visual bridge between what is conscious and subconscious. She creates a sort of visual poetry containing confirming and opposing elements which coexist peacefully, sometimes evoking contrasting feelings or emotions, reflecting on the complexity of human experience.


Rather than presenting answers, her ambiguous images open a space of introspection and vulnerability, inviting a deeper look and a connection to what is felt or intuited. 



There’s a theatricality in Figueiredo’s work inspired by performance art, dance and music: she evokes the dichotomy between the stage performer and their audience in the way she exposes her subjects to the viewer, and the positions in which she represents their bodies.



Figueiredo’s work deals with themes that reflect our present times: she creates images which ask us to slow down, challenging a fast-paced world, marked by image saturation, sensory overstimulation, and the dulling of emotional sensitivity.



Beyond its introspective character, her work raises questions about gender, femininity, individual fears caused by ancestral trauma and collective fears caused by an uncertainty about the future.