Joana Galego (b.1994) is a Portuguese artist based in London, UK. She graduated from the University of Lisbon in 2016 and subsequently attended the Royal Drawing School between 2016 and 2017. Galego explores the emotional vicissitudes or relationships, focusing particularly on power, vulnerability, miscommunication, loneliness, guilt, and the desire for connection and intimacy. Galego’s work ranges from small, intimate portraits to a world beyond the canvases in large scale, immersive tableaux depicting figures resting, playing, embracing or hiding. Regardless of the dimensions, her refined strokes and the carefully-planned compositions enable her work to possess a strong psychological potential and a sense of ephemerality – a parallel space-time that is distant from reality.

Her solo exhibitions include: “jardins”, 2024, Galeria Belard, Lisboa; “mole, lunar, sinal”, 2023, Soho Revue, London; “Spring and All”, 2019, The Sir Denis Mahon Award Show at the Royal Drawing School, London and “o lugar indeciso”, 2016, Museu das Artes de Sintra, Sintra (Portugal). Her selected group exhibitions include “Whose Muse?”, 2024, Palo Gallery, New York; “Cultural Synthesis” at Bienalle Jatim X, 2023, East Java (Indonesia); “O limite do meio”, 2023, Galeria Municipal do Montijo, Lisbon; “There’s a Real World Outside”, 2022, AHWNN Gallery, Ostende (Belgium) and “Preludio”, 2022, Galeria Belard, Lisbon.