Tiago Madaleno (1992, Portugal) lives and works in Porto (Portugal). He studied at the Department of Fine Arts, University of Porto, where he was awarded a Master’s degree in Painting (2016) with the project “Clepsydra – Image, document and Action”.
Madaleno’s artistic practice establishes a dialogue between different mediums’ histories, properties and specificities, in order to build fictional worlds that reflect upon image making, language and performance. He has been exhibiting his artworks regularly since 2013. Highlights to the solo shows “Smoke Room”, Museu Guerra Junqueiro, Porto (2023); “Light of September”, Galeria do Paço, Braga (2022); “A Garden at Night”, Rampa, Porto (2020); “Honeymoon”, Appleton – Cultural Association, Lisbon (2019) and “Clepsydra”, Serralves Museum, Porto (2017-2018); and to the collective exhibitions: “Portugal Ano Zero: Livros de fotografia da Revolução”, curated by José Luís Neves, Luís Pinto Nunes and Susana Lourenço Marques, Oliva Art Center, São João da Madeira (2024); “um corpo, um rio”, curated by David Revés, Galeria Liminare, Lisbon (2021); “Capital Work # General Strike”, curated by Paulo Mendes, Oliva Art Center, São João da Madeira (2019-2020).
A special mention to the mural painting “A leaf in the pocket” (2022), commissioned by Serralves Foundation, within the scope of their project ‘Windows to the World’ and carried out at the Porto Penitentiary Institution (Custóias), Matosinhos, and to the project “Portugal Tour in a Gazebo” (2019), a street performance in which a monument visits several regions in Portugal to invite amateur singers to perform underneath it.
Madaleno’s work has been distinguished with several prizes and grants, such as DGArtes (2024 – 2025); Grupo dos Amigos da Biblioteca-Museu Acquisition Prize (Amadeo de Souza Cardoso Prize 2023); Garantir Cultura grant (2021), Portuguese Ministry of Culture; Criatório 2019 grant, Porto City Council; Novo Banco Revelação Prize 2017, Serralves Foundation and Viana de Lima/Esposende City Council Prize 2017.
He is represented in several public and private collections, such as Contemporary Art Collection from the Portuguese Republic (CACE), MAAT – Fundação EDP, Culturgest – Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Porto City Council, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum Collection, Artworks, Esposende City Council, among others.
He has been an artist in residence in different contexts participating in several artistic residencies such as: Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Museum, Amarante, Portugal (2024); Merzbarn, Ambleside, England (2019); AiR 351, Cascais, Portugal (2018) in partnership with Artworks; No Entulho #01, Póvoa do Varzim, Portugal (2018).
During his time at AiR 351, Madaleno will focus upon the development of his most recent fiction called “A sound that arrives too late to an image”. Taking as a starting point an imaginary road-movie about a couple that intends to build a home while being on an infinite trip, Madaleno will speculate around the format of movie posters that aspire to be the movie itself, instead of its simple evocation, playing with the gap between language and perception, experience and description, event and translation. This work will be presented in the upcoming collective show “No Sétimo Continente”, at Colégio das Artes, Coimbra.