Madalena Anjos
Ténia’s dream
01.12.2022 - 18.02. 2023
Mala is pleased to present Ténia's dream, Madalena Anjos' first solo exhibition at Mala.
Madalena's practice begins with images, particularly their role in advertising, in design, on the street, on digital platforms, in social media, and she explores their decay and degradation - whether in the printed image, found on the ground, in the trash, cut out, bought, second or third hand; or digital - extracted from digital cybercultures, apps, websites, video games, and television.
The non-hierarchical perspective with which Madalena observes images is the driving force for developing her pictorial practice, starting from the need to transpose certain images into painting, which, at this moment, she identifies as the right medium for uncovering and exploring certain signs. Through the constant collection of images belonging to certain aesthetic universes - pop, kitsch, tacky, camp, cute - which are photographed, downloaded from the internet, printed, cut and scanned, and cyclically edited and post-produced, the artist maintains an atlas of resources, which, used as samples, are remixed in a quest to create connections where none existed before, exploring new visual proposals, techniques and materials.
Departing from an economy of means that uses limited resources, in particular paper and graphic materials, the artist develops a surface that is characterized as a large-scale collage, made of school notes, found photocopies, used notebooks, books and magazines ready to be discarded. In this process layers are created, the surface gains robustness in which text, images, stains, and drawings peek between layers of paint. The artist uses her room as her atelier, which leads her to use her own works and surfaces as palettes and containers, signaling the circular nature of the materials and the presence of the cosmology of the bedroom in her work.
At Mala, Ténia's dream unfolds as an installation that occupies the entire space, transporting us to Madalena's cosmos. The large and small scale drawings are spread all over the space, presenting us with the various characters that coexist in this saturated imaginary, as if in a portrait gallery. Between Pokémons, Bratz dolls, psychedelic graphics, and school notes, we ask ourselves, after all, who is Ténia?
Madalena Anjos (1995, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon. She graduated with a BFA in Communication Design at FBAUL, attended the Visual Communication program at the Weissensee Kunsthöchschule Berlin, and received a MFA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 2022. He presented the solo exhibitions Um abraço que nos derruba, Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa, and Work Pop-up, Rua Vítor Bastos, Lisbon. Group exhibitions include: Lx Lapa; Duplex Air; Fábrica do Braço de Prata; Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães and Casa das Histórias Paula Rego. She took part in the residencies Chapim - Herdade da Tojeira, Vila Velha de Ródão; MArt e Rés-Vés, Castelo de Vide.
Ténia’s dream
01.12.2022 - 18.02. 2023
Mala is pleased to present Ténia's dream, Madalena Anjos' first solo exhibition at Mala.
Madalena's practice begins with images, particularly their role in advertising, in design, on the street, on digital platforms, in social media, and she explores their decay and degradation - whether in the printed image, found on the ground, in the trash, cut out, bought, second or third hand; or digital - extracted from digital cybercultures, apps, websites, video games, and television.
The non-hierarchical perspective with which Madalena observes images is the driving force for developing her pictorial practice, starting from the need to transpose certain images into painting, which, at this moment, she identifies as the right medium for uncovering and exploring certain signs. Through the constant collection of images belonging to certain aesthetic universes - pop, kitsch, tacky, camp, cute - which are photographed, downloaded from the internet, printed, cut and scanned, and cyclically edited and post-produced, the artist maintains an atlas of resources, which, used as samples, are remixed in a quest to create connections where none existed before, exploring new visual proposals, techniques and materials.
Departing from an economy of means that uses limited resources, in particular paper and graphic materials, the artist develops a surface that is characterized as a large-scale collage, made of school notes, found photocopies, used notebooks, books and magazines ready to be discarded. In this process layers are created, the surface gains robustness in which text, images, stains, and drawings peek between layers of paint. The artist uses her room as her atelier, which leads her to use her own works and surfaces as palettes and containers, signaling the circular nature of the materials and the presence of the cosmology of the bedroom in her work.
At Mala, Ténia's dream unfolds as an installation that occupies the entire space, transporting us to Madalena's cosmos. The large and small scale drawings are spread all over the space, presenting us with the various characters that coexist in this saturated imaginary, as if in a portrait gallery. Between Pokémons, Bratz dolls, psychedelic graphics, and school notes, we ask ourselves, after all, who is Ténia?
Madalena Anjos (1995, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon. She graduated with a BFA in Communication Design at FBAUL, attended the Visual Communication program at the Weissensee Kunsthöchschule Berlin, and received a MFA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 2022. He presented the solo exhibitions Um abraço que nos derruba, Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa, and Work Pop-up, Rua Vítor Bastos, Lisbon. Group exhibitions include: Lx Lapa; Duplex Air; Fábrica do Braço de Prata; Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães and Casa das Histórias Paula Rego. She took part in the residencies Chapim - Herdade da Tojeira, Vila Velha de Ródão; MArt e Rés-Vés, Castelo de Vide.
Photo: Beatriz Pereira, Courtesy of Mala and the artist.