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about me

RODRIGO COSTA (b. 1999, Funchal, Portugal) is, above all else, a visual artist interested in the concepts of play and childhood applied to the day-to-day life. Exploring the fields of painting, sculpture, performance, video and installation, he creates colourful, fun, intentionally amateur-ish and DIY-like objects and situations, which encourage self-reflection and the change of certain social behaviours.

 

Currently based in his homeland, Madeira Island, he graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art – First Class from Coventry University in 2020 and has been dividing his time between art-making and freelancing as curator and cultural manager. Since returning to Madeira, he has teamed up with different branches of the Regional Government to create, establish and manage two brands that support, give space and promote the work of young and/or emerging artists under fair and justly-paid opportunities: the anona gallery (in partnership with the Regional Youth Department) and FRESH CONTEMPS (in partnership with the Regional Secretariate for Tourism and Culture). He often works alongside city halls as well, in projects such as Funchal’s Book Fair and the ENSEADA Festival. At the moment, he is also part of DGARTES’ Evaluation Committees.

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artist statement

My work draws from repressed needs and feelings, those that have been deleted and/or reprogrammed by society – our purest, unstained self. Researching ways of reawakening our more organic instincts, by evoking a simpler era – childhood –, it explores the concepts of playfulness, evasion and obliviousness, with great aesthetic emphasis on colour, light and scale.
 
Expanding on a child-like mind – busy, fuzzy, transformative – and utilising diverse media (painting, sculpture, video, performance), I represent expressions that incarnate  the fleetness so common to children. Inserted in environments that exaggerate in scale and momentum childish gestures and memories, amateur, odd, DIY-like objects, installations and situations reflect on how play may inform, extend and disturb what is described as a socially-acceptable “adult”.
 
Everything seems to be happening, everything appears to have been created – society exists drenched in utter boredom. We have forgotten the basics, drowned the easiness and killed true will. Instead,

there is a choice to wrongly feed insecurities, rage, hate, egos and depreciation. What I propose with

my practice is the creation of playgrounds for questioning and liberation of the self; a journey of

self-rediscovery that dabbles with scale, memory-based reality, identity and image; an alternative to the overly complicated now.

2020  ARTSTHREAD x iD Global Design Graduate Show 2020 (shortlisted)

 

2017  'CriaPoesia '17', CRIAMAR (Honorable Mention)

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2016  'Preserving in the present, the future of the past', Madeira Ethnographic Museum (Third Place)

awards & contests 

podcast episodes

naminhaterratv (1:09:10 – 1:14:05) (interview about 'the good, the bad and the obviously mad' – March 2023)

RTP Madeira (interview about FRESH CONTEMPS 2022 – September 2022)

Manhãs da 3Antena 3 (interview about 'O que aconteceu à cenoura?'June 2022)

press &
other features

Cristoph Hoppe (2018) 'Madeira - Insel der Aktiven'. Reise-Inspirationen (Herbst 2018), pp 20-26

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