Virtual Art Exhibition
Islands 2026
SOIL&TERRA
Jose
Zyberchema
Marcos Milewski is an established Argentinian-born artist working on Madeira Island. Known for his highly individual style that blends symbolism and surrealism, Milewski explores the poetic and subconscious dimensions of reality.
His work extends beyond the studio — he is the creator of the famous Blue Whale mural in the center of Funchal, as well as several other monumental murals across the island. His paintings are also part of museum collections around the world.
AICHA JAEGER
Aicha Jaeger-Djibey, “Aïcha” a German painter from Hamburg, was born in Gießen in 1981.
After graduating from high school, she trained in graphic design and worked for ten years in renowned design and advertising agencies. Painting has always followed her and she has had various exhibitions in Hamburg. Later she started a family in Munich. After a holiday in Madeira, she decided to move there. She acts and works as an artist in Funchal and dedicates herself to digital art in addition to analogue art.
Pedro
Candelaria
Pedro Candelaria´s artistic approach is centered on painting directly on site, in places that hold a personal and special significance for him. These locations reflect different moments of his life – from childhood to the present day. Through this practice, he explores the dialogue and often the tension between the memory of a place as he once experienced it and the reality of encountering it in the present moment.
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.
Jose
Zyberchema
José Zyberchema
Madrid, 1958
Spanish artist and curator of the ISLANDS project, based on Madeira Island since 2009,
where he works in the field of audiovisual arts. He is the founder of Photobook Club Madeira and the mentor behind the public art project artE de pORtas abErtas.
Through light, Zyberchema investigates the dual forces of Nature and Death, tracing their fragile balance and constant transformation.
Carina Mendonça
Сarina Mendonça is a contemporary artist and crafter from Madeira. Experimental, she works with upcycling and sculpture, transforming recycled materials into symbolic creatures that question the self and society, exposing fears, egoism, and inner contradictions.
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.
