Maria Bernardino (Macau, 1992) lives and works in Lisbon. She studied at ESAD-CR in Caldas da Rainha and Ar.Co. Since 2013, she has regularly exhibited her work and participated in various artist residencies. Her work spans across different mediums, including drawing, sculpture, video, and more recently, writing. She is interested in diverse subjects such as the magical power acquired from different peoples and cultures, therapeutic methods, and alternative forms of encountering others. Currently, she collaborates with artist Luísa Abreu on the project Didático Obscuro, where they question the act of playing and the game as an artistic practice.
In 2019, she won the Young Art Award – Centro Português de Serigrafia and completed an artist residency at Atelier CPS, where she created the Zodiac Series, a collection of 36 prints dedicated to the theme of the zodiac.
“Zodiac was created throughout a journey to discover the elements that make up the horoscope: affinities (tendencies of each sign), aspects (distances between the angles of each planet), planets (which coexist with the signs), houses (which divide the astrological map’s sky), and the horizon line (from which the ascendant emerges, making the map precise). Between interpretive freedom and the inheritance of a long tradition governed by mathematically exact elements, Zodiac is the result of a journey that seeks to resemble the task of an astrologer – interpreting, setting the tone intuitively and inspired, and playing with the field of possibilities within the astrological universe.” Maria Bernardino, Dec 2021
