Hugo Brazão

b. 1989, Madeira

Best Foot Backwards, 2019, Jesmonite, aqueous pigments, Timber, sharp sand, 320 x 270cm (Photo Credits: Devin Blair)
Best Foot Backwards, 2019, Jesmonite, aqueous pigments, Timber, sharp sand, 320 x 270cm (Photo Credits: Devin Blair)

Hugo’s artistic practice covers painting, sculpture and textiles. He is concerned with the interactions between fiction and reality or the real and the virtual.


Hugo will create or appropriate contemporary myths or fabricated realities that put together elements of hyperreality, current politics, escapism, detachment, social apathy and the present-day reliance on commodity. He has worked around various examples such as space exploration, psychological phenomena and human-nature relationship.
Hugo reactivates or reimagines the material found within his research and plays with the technical possibilities of it. He then works at finding and solving the possible narratives that are created around it. This combined research and experimentation process usually takes the form of installations, involving different techniques.

Recent solo exhibitions include TAKE TEN (2019) at the Las Palmas project space and Colmatar o hiato, tapar buracos ou como adiar um perigo iminente (2017) at MUDAS – Contemporary Art Museum of Madeira. He has also been exhibiting in group exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Future projects include a solo exhibition in London at the Embassy of Brazil (2019), followed by another solo show at Balcony gallery (Lisbon, 2020). Brazão was recently awarded with the VIA Arts Prize (London, 2018), a residency in the Norwegian island of Stokkøya (2018) and The Helen Scott Lidgett Studio Award (London, 2015).

The artist was in the following exhibition:
RAT TRAP x g39
  • Best Foot Backwards, 2019, Jesmonite, aqueous pigments, Timber, sharp sand, 320 x 270cm (Photo Credits: Devin Blair)
  • There is an elephant in this room, 2019, Cotton and Acrylic paint, 240 x 75 cm ( Photo Credits: Joanna Pianka)
  • O’ mice an’ men, 2019, Installation view (Photo Credits: João Neves)
  • O’ mice an’ men, 2019, Installation view (Photo Credits: João Neves)
  • TAKE TEN, 2019, Installation view ( Photo Credits: Samuel Duarte)