Rafaela Nunes

Rafaela Nunes, born in Lisbon (1991), lives between Lisbon and Palmela — between the city and the countryside. She completed an undergraduate and a Master’s degree in Painting at the Pintura pela Faculdade de Belas-Artes de Lisboa, where she explored the possibility of creating extraterritorial spaces and painting. Through painted or carved fictions, her work consists of pursuing and creating a sense of strangeness that certain places, things or phenomena provide, which due to their atypical nature, encompass a universe under the name Nenhures. Using a mystical and magic language, she creates environments ranging from the wild nature and the artificial, suggesting alternative worlds. She uses children’s “make-believe” strategy to approach the insecurity of spaces, things and beings. Thus she seeks to explore the fragile relationship between people and the utopia. Her career includes exhibitions at the Ministry of Environment, at the Espinho Museum, at Fundação PT, among others. She has obtained grants to carry out artistic residencies at the Centro de Estudos de Arte Contemporânea de Vila Nova da Barquinha, with the Fundação EDP, and at the Palácio de Quintanar, in Segovia, Spain, where she was selected to represent the Faculdade de Belas-Artes de Lisboa.