Virtual Art Exhibition
Islands 2026
SOIL&TERRA
Jose
Zyberchema
José Zyberchema holds an academic background in biology, later gradually moving toward photography, audiovisual practices, curatorial work, and cultural projects exploring the relationship between ecology, landscape, public space, and contemporary art. Based in Madeira since 2009, he became closely connected to the island’s artistic and independent cultural scene through projects such as Arte de Portas Abertas and other community-based initiatives.
As curator of Islands. 2026 — Soil & Terra, Zyberchema brings together artistic practices connected to sustainability, memory, territory, and the fragile relationship between people and the environments they inhabit. His curatorial approach reflects a strong interest in keeping places alive through culture, community, and human presence — not only through tourism and consumption.
Fatima Spinola
Fátima Spínola (Santana, Madeira, 1984) é artista plástica, licenciada e pós-graduada em Pintura pela Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. Trabalha entre a pintura, a instalação e a intervenção site-specific, explorando a memória, a matéria e a experiência sensorial da paisagem insular.
Inspirada pela sua infância rural na Madeira, incorpora materiais orgânicos e elementos encontrados como vestígios de memória e território. A sua obra foi apresentada em Portugal, Espanha, Itália e Brasil e integra as coleções Imago Mundi e Périplos — Arte Portugués de Hoy, do Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Málaga.
Maria Luisa
Spinola
Luísa Spínola (b. 1962, Funchal) is a Madeiran visual artist, illustrator and art educator. She holds a degree in Fine Arts and Painting and a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art and Heritage from the University of Madeira.
Since 1994, she has participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions, working across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking and installation. She has also illustrated books for children and young adults, poetry collections and chronicles. In 2006, she founded Atelier Gatafunhos, an art studio dedicated to developing creativity and artistic expression among children, young people and adults.
Yuliia P.
Yuliia P. is a Ukrainian-born contemporary artist based in Portugal. Her work explores themes of freedom, self-discovery, and the mysteries of the universe. Inspired by Portugal’s skies and horizons, she developed the Collection, using acrylic on canvas with bold colours and textured forms. Through abstraction and cosmic imagery, Yuliia invites viewers to reflect on the unseen forces that connect us and to find light and meaning in the unknown.
This marks her second exhibition in Portugal — and her second collaboration with Art Center Caravel, where her works continue to captivate audiences with their depth and radiance.
M. Arantza Gaztañaga Garabieta is an artist and researcher at the University of the Basque Country (EHU), currently collaborating with the University of Madeira. Their artistic practice explores sensory perception through the personal experience of living with uncontrolled epilepsy.
Working with themes of light, vision and vulnerability, Gaztañaga transforms the tensions created by photosensitive epilepsy into a visual language in which risk, beauty and creativity coexist.
Arantza Gaztañaga Garabieta
Carina Mendonça
Carina Mendonça is a visual artist whose sculptural practice explores inner transformation and the symbolic dimensions of human emotion. Through organic forms and metaphorical imagery, she examines fear, pride, vulnerability and self-awareness. Her works approach sculpture as a process of transformation, in which difficult emotions can become sources of compassion, balance and personal growth.
For ISLANDS 2026 — Soil & Terra, Carina presents two sculptures exploring our relationship with nature, creation and emptiness.
Born in 1991 in Santa Maria da Feira, Aveiro, Samuel has been exploring himself and the world in an endless search for explanations. The taste for drawing was an inheritance left him by his father, and that, over time, became a passion for painting in general. He also began an interest in philosophy, emotional intelligence, and human behaviour. Samuel, since childhood, has been aware of the need within himself to ask the big questions pertaining to human loneliness and isolation. Today as an adult he acknowledges the logical and rational reasons but continues to ask the questions through his art. Samuel has held several “normal” jobs and whilst embracing adulthood still wears his hood of melancholia and loneliness.
Samuel
Santos
Joana
Viveiros
Joana Viveiros (b. 1996, Madeira) is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work is grounded in material research, site-specific practices, and experimental methodologies.
Her practice explores the relationship between territory, body, and matter, approaching the material landscape as an active agent in the creation of the artwork. Through sculpture, installation, drawing, analogue photography, and video, Viveiros works with natural and everyday materials, exploring their historical, ecological, and symbolic contexts.
Amalia Bonanno
Amalia Bonanno began painting at the age of nine, working with oils and studying the works of artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh and Rothko.
Her early interest in art later took her to Florence, where she intended to study painting restoration and began an apprenticeship in gilding, gaining experience in this traditional artistic craft.
Over the following years, while family life became her priority, painting and sculpture remained part of her creative journey.
About a year ago, Amalia moved to Madeira, choosing the island for a new beginning — and an opportunity to return to a long-held ambition: to dedicate herself fully to painting.
Andris
Višņevskis
Latvian maker based in Portugal whose practice explores the creative potential of natural fibres through sustainable craftsmanship. Entirely self-taught, he has spent over a decade working with hemp and flax, transforming these renewable materials into handmade paper, natural building materials, and functional objects. His work combines traditional knowledge with contemporary approaches, celebrating the beauty, texture, and authenticity of natural materials.
Andris presents Earth Palette, a new installation inspired by the colours, textures, and material memory of soil. Created from handmade hemp paper coloured with natural soil pigments, the work reflects the relationship between landscape, cultivation, and craft.
The exhibition marks the Madeira premiere of the project, celebrating the beauty of nature through handmade craft.
Lize-Mari de Abreu is an established South African-born artist, living in Funchal, Madeira. Her personal journey is shaped by a deep love for creation and storytelling.
Her work is driven by a strong sense of purpose and her contributions have earned her numerous international accolades from The Clios Awards, Global Awards, IPA Awards, Cristal Awards, and more.
Lize-Mari
de Abreu
Hanamaro Chaki
Born in Tokyo, Hanamaro Chaki studied Fine Arts at the University of Brighton. After living and working in Barcelona and Mexico, she settled in Madeira in 2015, where she continues to develop her artistic practice.
Working primarily with drawing and painting, Chaki explores inner worlds, hidden emotions and dreams. Lines become signs and symbols, giving form to imaginary creatures and landscapes.
Nature and the cycle of life — birth, transformation and death — are recurring themes in her work. Her artistic language can be described as Poetic Surrealism, where the intimate, imaginary and symbolic converge.
Carsten Peters
Carsten Peters, born in Bremen in 1967, lives and works in Madeira. After an early interest in art and photography, he returned to artistic practice later in life, developing an intensive sculptural practice from 2024 onwards.
Working with found wood, metal and increasingly stone, Peters allows the natural material to guide the form rather than beginning with a fixed design. Grain, fractures and traces of weathering remain visible, becoming part of the finished work.
His photography of water surfaces — reflections, currents and waves — also strongly influences his sculptures. Through this dialogue between natural form and deliberate intervention, Peters explores movement, time and transformation, translating fleeting phenomena into lasting forms.
Mara Rusu
Through her landscapes, Romanian visual artist Mara Rusu examines personal alienation and our changing relationship with nature, tradition and place.
Her work reflects on how environments shape who we become and how connecting with a place can leave a lasting impact on our identity.
Cristina Perneta
Cristina Perneta holds a degree in Fine Arts – Painting from the University of Madeira. Her practice spans painting, drawing and installation, with landscape and the natural world at the heart of her research.
Working with natural pigments such as earth, charcoal and plants, she explores ecology, interconnectedness and impermanence through ancestral techniques. Madeira, its landscape, silence and stillness, remains a fundamental source of inspiration.
Her work has been exhibited at MUDAS – Museum of Contemporary Art of Madeira, Museu de Electricidade Casa da Luz and other cultural spaces in Funchal.
Maria Chiorean
Originally from Romania, Maria Chiorean explores the contrast between intimate experience and objective reality. Death appears in her work as a silent presence, approached through contemplation and personal awareness.
Her figures create a bridge between exterior and interior worlds, often represented through landscapes and enclosed spaces.
Gizela
Sztoika
Romanian artist Gizela Sztoika works with monotype, exploring repetition, transformation and visual memory. Each print becomes a new interpretation of the original image rather than its exact reproduction.
Colour connects the works, preserving traces of the initial atmosphere while allowing new forms and meanings to emerge.
Mihaela
Ștețco
Working from Romania, Mihaela Ștețco approaches painting as a reflection of her experiences and state of mind at a particular moment.
Rather than following a fixed subject or technique, she works intuitively and allows each series to develop from her surroundings, embracing uncertainty as a space for freedom and discovery.
Silvana Băloniu
For Romanian painter Silvana Băloniu, memory is both a subject and a creative material, connecting personal experience with the passage of time.
In her paintings, memory behaves like water: fluid, persistent and constantly changing. Often dominated by shades of blue, her works move between melancholy and serenity, remembering and letting go.
Patricia Alexa Farcaș
Patricia Alexa Farcaș
Patricia Alexa Farcaș is a visual artist from Romania whose politically engaged practice centres on feminist and social themes, particularly sexual violence against women and its normalisation. Drawing on her experience as a martial artist, she explores the tension between strength and vulnerability, transforming ideas of protection, exposure and resilience.
PEDRO
VALE
Pedro Vale was born in Porto in 1979 and has lived in Funchal since 2002, where he works as a primary school teacher. He studied Cultural Sciences at the University of Madeira and is constantly searching for new forms of artistic expression.
In 2017, he published his first book of poetry, Azul Instantâneo (Instant Blue). In 2026, he presented his first series of abstract photography, Eu sou aquilo: geometria, cor e linhas (I Am That: Geometry, Colour and Lines), at the Sala dos Arcos of the Jesuit College of Funchal.
Through his work, Vale seeks to establish dialogues with art history, literature, spirituality, other artistic disciplines and the world of his time.
ANDREIA NÓBREGA
Andreia Nóbrega (b. 1973, Funchal) is a Madeiran visual artist who holds a degree in Fine Arts from ESAD.CR — the School of Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha.
Her artistic practice is centred primarily on drawing and emerges from a profound connection with nature. Through highly detailed compositions, Nóbrega creates imaginary landscapes inspired by journeys, memories and lived experiences, exploring the relationship between territory, identity, contemplation and belonging.
Since 2002, she has participated in solo and group exhibitions and has also worked in illustration. Her work has been presented at venues including Porta 33, Museu da Quinta das Cruzes, Museu Henrique e Francisco Franco and Solar do Ribeirinho. Since 2020, she has also collaborated on a research, dyeing and illustration project dedicated to dye-producing plants.
HELENA BERENGUER
Helena Berenguer (b. 1972, Machico, Madeira) is a visual artist and art educator. She holds a degree in Project Design from the former Institute of Art and Design at the University of Madeira and a Master’s degree in Educational Sciences, specialising in Pedagogical Supervision.
She has participated in solo and group exhibitions since 1994. Her practice encompasses painting, mixed media, sculpture and papier-mâché, frequently exploring nature, island landscapes and the relationship between material, memory and imagination. Some of her works incorporate newspaper, glue and reused materials, reflecting an ecological awareness.
Berenguer currently coordinates the Office of Artistic Innovation and Production at the Conservatory — Professional School of the Arts of Madeira. Her work has been presented at numerous cultural venues across the region.
