Lives and works in Lisbon.

Maria Ana Vasco Costa creates sculptural objects and site-specific artworks, working mainly in the field of ceramics.

After graduating in Architecture in 2004 and a brilliant professional career in London, collaborating with Sir David Adjaye and Sir Terence Conran, Maria Ana Vasco Costa returns to Lisbon in 2009, and graduates in Ceramics and Fine Arts from the Ar.Co Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual.

Ceramics becomes her favorite material, because of the plastic possibilities that the finished ceramic body offers, especially in terms of color, depth, temperature, variation. This fascination for ceramics is rooted in her Azorean origins. Surrounded by raw nature, volcanic rocks and vastness, the artist sees her aesthetic plasticity through these forces.

In 2014 she executes her first projects using handmade three-dimensional tiles and experimented with color, texture and pattern, combining simple three-dimensional geometric shapes, applied to an architectural scale, in the tradition of monochromatic Portuguese tiles.

(…) my work aims to address personal questions and concerns. The interventions try to offer answers related to the idea of pattern, to the relationship between pieces; to the relationship of buildings/surfaces with the street or with the observer; to the potential of light/shadow effects and color variations; to the relationship of the ceramic material with our body, etc.

That same year, she is invited to direct the Ceramics Department at Ar.Co, a position she still holds today.

Between April 2017 and December 2019, the artist is invited to the residence at the historic Viúva Lamego. Her creations are awarded at the Surface Design Awards in London in 2016, 2017 and 2018. In 2019, the artist was shortlisted for the Mostyn Open.

As part of the closing ceremony of the France-Portugal 2022 Season, the Portuguese artist created in Lisbon a totem sculpture in homage to Simone Weil, inaugurated in the presence of the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa and the French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the Mayor of Lisbon Carlos Moeda, Jean Veil, son of Simone Veil, the Portuguese Minister of Culture Pedro Adão e Silva and the French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak.

The artist is currently presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, in the exhibition “I II III IV V – five decades of ar.co “.

Maria Ana Vasco Costa regularly exhibits her work in Portugal and abroad: “Ice Ice Baby”, Appleton, (2021); “Pitching yourself a tent were we all may enter”, Quetzal Art Center (2021), Vidigueira; “Água dÁlto, Galeria Municipal de Almada, (2019); “Veículo Longo”, Casa-Atelier Vieira da Silva, (2019); “The Land of the Glazed Cities”, Imperial Palace, Beijing (2019); “Do presente para o futuro”, Museu do Azulejo, Lisboa (2018); “Portugal Tropical”, Merzbau Gallery, Miami (2016); “Primeira Escolha”, Museu José Malhoa, Caldas da Rainha (2016); “Mostyn 19 Agora”, Mostyn, Landudno, Wales (2015), “HD”, Espaço AZ, Lisboa (2014) e “ABECEDÁRIO – 40 Anos do Ar. Co”, Museu do Chiado, Lisboa, Portugal (2013).

View of the exhibition Ice Ice Baby
Appleton, 2021
Maria Ana Vasco Costa, Untitled, (Ice Ice Baby), 2020
Glazed Ceramics
View of the exhibition Agua d'Alto
Municipal de Arte, Almada, 2019
Maria Ana Vasco Costa, Untitled, (Veiculo Longo), 2017
Glazed Ceramics
137 x 13 x 40 cm