Catarina Branco is an artist born in São Miguel(Azores) in 1974. She holds a degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. She has participated in international biennials and fairs of contemporary art. Her works are part of several public and private collections. Among her solo exhibitions, highlights include "Fenais da Luz" (2010), at the Fonseca Macedo – Arte Contemporânea gallery, Ponta Delgada, and "Fez-se Luz" (2012), at the Carlos Machado Museum, Ponta Delgada, and also, in 2013, at the contemporary art cultural centers of Recife and Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where she began an artistic residency at the Aloísio Magalhães Museum of Modern Art. In 2013, Catarina Branco was invited by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to develop a specific work to be part of the Próximo Futuro project. The exhibition took place in the Foundation's garden. Furthermore, during the same period, Catarina presented the site-specific installation "Calligraphy" in the White Room of the Marquis of Pombal Palace, home to the Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa cultural association in Lisbon. In 2014, Catarina Branco participated with an original piece in the bibliographic exhibition "April 25, 1974 - Portugal's Carnation Revolution," California. She was invited by the Spanish curator Mónica Careaga to participate in the group exhibition "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" at the Astarté Gallery, Madrid. Also in 2014, she was invited by curator Fátima Lambert to participate in a contemporary ceramics artist residency in Alcobaça and a group exhibition at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, Porto, and in 2024 she presented a set of new works at the Fonseca Macedo gallery - O instante do mundo. As plantas do meu jardim, Museu Carlos Machado, Ponta Delgada em 2026.
CATARINA BRANCO IS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST FROM SÃO MIGUEL. AZORES, WHOSE PRACTICE MOVES FLUIDLY BETWEEN PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND INSTALLATION. ROOTED IN AN EXPRESSIVE VISUAL LANGUAGE. HER WORK EXPLORES THE TENSION BETWEEN NATURE. IMAGINATION, AND EMOTIONAL SPACE THROUGH LAYERED COMPOSITIONS AND UNTAMED ORGANIC FORMS. DRAWING FROM BOTANICAL IMAGERY AND ABSTRACTION, BRANCO CREATES WORKS THAT FEEL BOTH INSTINCTIVE AND IMMERSIVE - TRANSFORMING PAINTING INTO SOMETHING PHYSICAL, ATMOSPHERIC, AND DEEPLY PSYCHOLOGICAL.
WITh An ESTABLIShED INTeRNATIONAL EXHIBITION HISTORY AND A PRACTICE THAT CONTINUES TO EVOLVE BEYOND TRADITIONAL BOUNDARIES, CATARINA BRANCO IS AN ARTIST WORTH WATCHING AS CONTEMPORARY COLLECTORS INCREASINGLY SEEK WORK THAT BALANCES MATERIAL EXPERIMENTATION WITH EMOTIONAL RESONANCE. HER ABILITY TO MERGE RAW GESTURE, SCULPTURAL PRESENCE, AND LYRICAL ABSTRACTION POSITIONS HER WITHIN A NEW GENERATION OF ARTISTS REDEFINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAINTING, SPACE, AND PERCEPTION.
THE PLANTS OF MY GARDEN — CATARINA BRANCO
The work of the artist is characterised by an approach that crosses different fields, going beyond traditional boundaries between disciplines. Painting emerges as the central axis of her practice, expanding into three-dimensional forms. In this exhibition, Catarina Branco (Ponta Delgada, 1974) transforms her garden into a battlefield for the construction of hybrid images.
This exhibition situates itself in an interval, a place of transition between painting and sculpture, between botanical delicacy and dense, rough matter. This is not a garden of perfection or a refuge of order. It is, rather, a human gesture that seeks to come to terms with the disorder of nature or imagination. The works in this exhibition express beauty, but not safety; they evoke a nameless place that serves creative desire, as Natália Correia said of the (poet-)artist who is occupied with inventing the world.
In this space, a process of unlearning is proposed (“To know how to see without thinking, / To know how to see when one sees,” Alberto Caeiro): the landscape is not a stage, but a state of mind — it is reality itself, imagined.
If, in many cases, the garden is an act of reconciliation, here it becomes an act of unrest, resisting the discipline of forms, where Catarina Branco’s untamed forms may, perhaps, domesticate the inevitable force of nature.
José Macas de Carvalho
Curator for the Visual Arts — PDL26 Portuguese Capital of Culture.
