Thelma Pott (b. 1984) is a Portuguese visual artist based in Porto. Her practice is centred on painting as a space for engaging with contemporary environmental and socio-political crises. Working through abstraction, she explores how images of catastrophe, ecological fragility and collective memory can be translated into visual fields shaped by matter, gesture, colour and luminosity. Drawing on photography, current events and documentary references, her work transforms states of crisis into painterly compositions marked by atmosphere, instability and reflection.
She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and later completed a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies at the College of Arts, University of Coimbra. In 2013, she was awarded a Project Grant by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon.
Pott has presented her work internationally in exhibitions and projects across Portugal, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and the United States. In 2017, she participated in Poster! at Black Ball Projects, New York, as part of the international coalition Hands Off Our Revolution. In September 2019, she received the Reclaim Award in Cologne. The award jury included Tim Berresheim, Stéphane Biesenbach, Christof Breidenich, Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Ditmar Schädel and Anja K. Sevcik, and the selected work was subsequently shown on public billboards throughout the city.
In October 2021, she was selected to exhibit at Florence Biennale XIII. During the Biennale, she took part in La Bandiera del Mondo 1+1=3, a collaborative performance by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Angelo Savarese. The following month, her work was included in Contemporary Venice 9 – Mixing Identities and Future Landscapes, curated by Luca Curci at the Misericordia Archives, Venice. In 2022, she held her first solo exhibition in Portugal, Hidden Place, at Gubian Gallery, Porto.
Other selected exhibitions include Co-Existence 7 at Rossocinabro Gallery, Rome (2020); Artists of Today and of Tomorrow, Rome (2021); Rebirth at Florence Contemporary Gallery (2021); State of the Art at Palazzo Maffei Marescotti, Rome (2022); Multitude at the Luciana Matalon Foundation, Milan (2022); the Biennale Art Box Expo project at Tana Art Space, Venice (2022); Women’s Essence at Gallery 24b, Paris (2022); EuroAirport Basel during Art Basel Week (2023 and 2024); Unseen Reality at Museo Villa Paolina Bonaparte, Viareggio (2023); the Francesco Gonzaga Museum, Mantua (2024); and Florence Biennale XV (2025).
Her work has received several international distinctions, including the WAA Woman Art Award (2022). This award forms part of a project recognised by UNESCO in 2020 as a ‘Project for Excellence in Gender Equality’. Further distinctions include the Botticelli Prize (2023), the Leonardo da Vinci Art Award (2023), and the International Prize Velázquez & Goya (2024). Her work has been featured in publications including Aesthetica, Art Ascent, Inside Artists, Art Hole Magazine, The Flux Review, BlueBee, Art Seen and Artists’ Close-Up Magazine. Her photographic work has also been presented through LensCulture.
