Bárbara Gil

Bárbara Gil Pereira was born in Funchal in 1978 and lives and works between Lisbon and Madeira. She studied design at the Universidade da Madeira and at IADE, complementing her training in painting at the National Academy and in the studio of Sam Adoquei in New York. She also attended the Art Students League in the same city and Central Saint Martins in London.

The human figure, often set in urban environments, occupies a central place in her painting. Attention to detail sits alongside more spontaneous and apparently unfinished passages, in a language that brings the academic tradition close to contemporary approaches. The personal references present in the works leave room for other experiences and interpretations.

In 2015 she was one of the group of eight artists selected by Alexandre Farto, known as Vhils, for an artistic creation workshop. That same year she won the first edition of the Urbart competition, organised by Funchal City Council, with the project "Zapruder", carried out on the façade of the Almirante Reis car park. Other large-scale interventions in Madeira followed, realised through public and private initiatives.

Her exhibition career extends from Portugal to other European countries and to Japan, where she took part in several editions of the Spiral Independent Creators Festival in Tokyo. In Iceland she showed work and undertook an artist's residency organised by the Icelandic Visual Artists Association.

In 2022 she presented the exhibition "That One Time When Time Stood Still" at Galeria São Mamede in Lisbon. Taking the experience of the first lockdown as its starting point, the group of works addressed isolation and the sense of a suspended time, crossing autobiographical references with the imagery of science-fiction films.

Her work is represented in the Museu de Eletricidade da Madeira and in private and corporate collections in Portugal and abroad.