Beatriz Manteigas is a Portuguese visual artist, researcher and NGO director. In 2022, she completed her PhD in Drawing at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, supported by a scholarship from the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology. She also holds a Master’s degree in Artistic Anatomy (2014) and a degree in Painting (2012) from the same institution, including study exchanges at the University of Porto (2011-2012), the Royal Academy of St. Petersburg, Russia (2011), and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain (2010-2011). She briefly resided and worked in Düsseldorf (2012) and London (2010). In 2016, she co-founded Associação Quinta das Relvas, a NGO dedicated to non-formal education on arts and sustainability and based on an ecological farm where she resides and works, serving as the current president of the board and coordinator of the Arts Department. That same year, she became a researcher at CIEBA – Center for Research and Studies in Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. Between 2009 and 2014, she also worked as illustrator for children’s books, magazines and newspapers, such as Diário de Notícias. She has exhibited and presented her work extensively since 2009, both nationally and internationally in countries such as Belgium, Brazil, England, Scotland, Spain, Turkey, and the USA. She has participated in artist residencies in Brazil, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, and her work is represented in private and public collections in Portugal and abroad. In 2025, she will be an artist-in-residence at The International Speculative Ecologies Program by Labverde, at the Amazon Rainforest (BR).
Beatriz Manteigas’ selected past projects and series include: Vaigotas artist book (2024); Vaigotas (2023); Trained Monkeys (2020); Spectacle Society (2020); Campsite(2018); and Liquid Societies (2018).
Statement:
“My body of work consists of thinking exercises on cultural, social and ecological issues, which start from the singular to echo the plural, and which are mostly in the form of drawings and paintings on paper.
To do this, I use representative elements that start from the particular – symbols, signs, letters, figures, but also colors and compositions – that populate images that are created in search of associations, confrontations, mistranslations and errors that promote and emphasize what appears different from the objective, but still allows itself to be plurally interpreted. The content of these works can be based on any theme and considered on the basis of human intersubjectivity – a desire for understanding and solidarity – to which they aim to be an ode. In this sense, more than the starting point of each work (which is often only residually referred to in the final image), what matters is what emerges in the process of making it: accidents that are a reference to time, space and change – unreproducible, unrepeatable and uncontrollable – but which, because they are anchored in representation, are interpreted as such, becoming metaphors for what will and will not be intelligible, amalgamating both for consideration.”
To do this, I use representative elements that start from the particular – symbols, signs, letters, figures, but also colors and compositions – that populate images that are created in search of associations, confrontations, mistranslations and errors that promote and emphasize what appears different from the objective, but still allows itself to be plurally interpreted. The content of these works can be based on any theme and considered on the basis of human intersubjectivity – a desire for understanding and solidarity – to which they aim to be an ode. In this sense, more than the starting point of each work (which is often only residually referred to in the final image), what matters is what emerges in the process of making it: accidents that are a reference to time, space and change – unreproducible, unrepeatable and uncontrollable – but which, because they are anchored in representation, are interpreted as such, becoming metaphors for what will and will not be intelligible, amalgamating both for consideration.”
Support: Beatriz Manteigas’ residency is made possible with support from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Fundação PLMJ, Associação Quinta das Relvas, Cabe 184, and Câmara Municipal de Albergaria-a-Velha.
