Artist Name: Mariana Maia Rocha
Residency Dates: July 2026
Born: 2000
Hometown: Porto, Portugal
Lives & Works: Porto, Portugal
URL: marianamaiarocha.com | Instagram: @marianamaiarocha_studio
Education:
2023 – 2025 — MA in Fine Arts (Painting), Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto (FBAUP), Portugal
2019 – 2023 — BA in Fine Arts (Painting), Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto (FBAUP),
Portugal
2018 – 2019 — Integrated Master’s Degree in Architecture (attendance), Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto (FAUP), Portugal
Bio/Statement:
Mariana Maia Rocha is a visual artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice operates at the intersection of body, memory, and urban space. Working across drawing, photo-performance, installation, and material-based processes, she approaches drawing as an expanded field in which the body becomes an instrument of inscription. Through gestures of friction, pressure, and transfer — using graphite, latex, wax, and direct contact with architectural surfaces—her work produces indexical traces that register time, labor, and spatial transformation. Engaging with archives, ruins, construction sites, and provisional architectures, Rocha investigates how contemporary cities operate through cycles of construction, disappearance, and replacement. Her work reveals fragile material residues embedded in urban surfaces, positioning the body as a critical device capable of exposing the tensions between visibility and erasure that structure contemporary spatial experience.
Mariana’s solo exhibitions include At the Threshold of Memory, Albergue SCM Gallery, Macau (2025); Essays on the Wind, Júlio Resende Foundation – Lugar do Desenho, Porto (2025); Cartographies of Absence, ArtLab24 Gallery, Espinho (2025). Her work has been exhibited at ARCOlisboa (2026); Museu do Chiado, Lisbon (2025); Kubik Gallery, Porto (2025); UCCLA, Lisbon (2025). Her works are part of collections including The University of Porto Public Collection; Millennium BCP Foundation Collection; Loures Municipal Collection; Fernando Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection; Ivo Martins Collection. Mariana Maia Rocha has received the Viana de Lima Prize, Millennium bcp Young Art Prize, and the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian Distinction – Future PhD researchers from the University of Porto.
Support: Mariana’s residency is made possible with support from the Shuttle Programme – Pláka Platform, Porto City Council.
