Today we are speaking with Ana Malta, a Lisbon-based artist currently in residence at Underdogs Gallery.
For one month, Ana has transformed the gallery into her temporary studio, working without a predetermined theme and allowing intuition, experimentation and the process itself to define the direction of the project.
Her practice moves between painting, drawing and installation, exploring colour, pattern, gesture and the unexpected associations that emerge through the act of making. The residency will culminate in her solo exhibition, Troca o Passo, opening at Underdogs on 9 October and bringing together works created during this intense month-long period.
This residency at Underdogs began without a predefined theme or a fixed idea of what the final exhibition would become. How did you approach that kind of freedom when you first entered the space? Actually, my work always starts this way. I never have a draft in mind before a piece exists, so entering the residency without a defined theme wasn’t really new to me. It’s a process that relies heavily on immediate creativity, which can be challenging at times, because there’s always a fear of what’s coming. But on the other hand, it’s also freedom. Because this was a familiar situation, I brought my studio into the gallery space. It made it easier to create without being in my bubble, where I can be vulnerable. The goal was to use the public to help me with exactly this process. Having visitors there, questioning and intervening, gave me something to respond to and pushed me beyond what I would have done alone.
For an entire month, the Underdogs gallery has effectively become your studio. How has working inside the gallery, rather than in your usual studio environment, influenced the scale, rhythm or direction of the works you are making? It was interesting to work in a gallery because people expect to see finished pieces on the wall, and very quickly they realised that something different was happening. I find it fascinating to transform this space and give it new concepts or purposes. It makes the experience richer, both for me as an artist and for the public, who can immerse themselves in an artistic world from start to finish. Of course, it was well outside my comfort zone. There were plenty of interruptions in the process, and people’s presence affected the direction of the work. But instead of fighting that, I tried to make the most of the opportunity and decided to change my practice for one month. As for scale, I took the chance to try something new: a performative piece that resulted in small-scale works, which is not common in my practice.
Your practice is very intuitive, with colour, patterns, drawing and different materials accumulating almost like layers of thought or memory. How does a work usually begin for you, and at what point do you feel that a composition is complete? My work, which is mostly focused on painting, begins with patches of colour. To create a guide for my thinking, I divide the canvas into random shapes of different colours. From there I move into the drawing phase, filling these colour spaces with different scenes and/or patterns. Then I move on to the painting phase, where everything flows more fluidly. A work is finished when the composition of patches is complete.
You often allow experimentation and even “error” to become part of the process. Has anything unexpected happened during this residency that changed the direction of the work? During this residency, every intervention from the public changed the course of the work. All of these “mistakes” were essential to the creation of the main piece. I was expecting unexpected situations, and the aim was precisely to take inspiration from them.
The works created during the residency will come together in your upcoming solo exhibition, Troca o Passo. What does this title mean to you, and what can visitors expect to discover in the exhibition? “Troca o Passo” literally means “change your step.” For me it speaks to what this residency was about: stepping out of my comfort zone, changing my practice for a month, and letting other people change the direction of the work along the way. The exhibition centres on a performative piece made of many small individual pieces, built with the public’s intervention from beginning to end. Visitors can expect to see works that were shaped by the stories and choices of the people who passed through the studio, and who questioned, created and left their mark. The public can also create the composition and size of the works themselves, which is where the title comes full circle: by changing my step, they become part of the work.
Do you feel this residency at Underdogs marks a new chapter in your practice, and where would you like to take the work next? It certainly marked my artistic practice in some way. I opened myself up to new ways of creating and to other kinds of surfaces, not just canvas or paper. As a result, a new visual identity was born, very different from what I usually have. It’s more detailed, because each individual piece had to make sense on its own, and not only the work as a whole. I drew inspiration from imaginary worlds that contrast strongly with the realities I usually present. I went beyond the real, into an unlimited world, and from here on I think I will keep exploring this path.
