Fernanda Galvão

Based between São Paolo and Paris, Fernanda Galvão paints ecosystems of plant life rooted in careful study and fantastical invention. Through color and form she suggests narrative scenes of entropy and renewal, looking to biology for metaphor. Her research is driven by the idea that plants can be a reservoir for memory; several of her paintings evoke a mangrove coastline as a site of imaginative rebirth, with titles referencing the Earthsea universe of feminist fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin. Painting with deep cobalt blues alongside earthy browns and pink, she articulates plant species using charcoal, pastel and oil bar, exaggerating their undulating curves and pistons as though to link flora to our human bodies. Absent of sunlight and horizon, Galvao’s paintings give the feeling that these plants originate from an otherworldly realm of science fiction or an interior landscape of her own mythology.

Fernanda Galvão (b.1994, São Paulo, Brazil) has a BA in Visual Art from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, São Paulo, Brazil. She has had solo exhibitions at Casa Triângulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Foundry Seoul, Seoul, South Korea; and Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil; among others. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil; Trisivrikos, London, England; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil; La Dons Gallery, Hamburg, Germany; Neon Gallery, London, England; and Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo, Brazil; among others. She has received the Acquisition Awards; 44º SARP at Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (2021) and 47º Salão de Arte Contemporânea Luiz Sacilotto in Santo André, São Paulo. In June 2023, she participated in the Joshua Tree Highlands Art Residency in the Mojave Desert in California and than in the Cité International Des Arts in Paris. Galvão lives and works in Paris, France.