Young Artists You Need to Know, Episode 8: Meet Pedro Pena (1996, Portugal)
He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon
@fbaul , where he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Art and Heritage Sciences (2021) and a Postgraduate degree in Discourses of Contemporary Photography (2024).
Pedro is interested in the plastic potential of analog photographic media, including medium format, instant photography, and other alternative processes. His artistic practice begins in reality and expands into the imagined, offering the visual codes that inhabit his images new possibilities of understanding.
Photography, in his work, proposes a stratigraphic reading of the emotional layers within images, uniting the relationship between the visible and the intangible. Above all, his work seeks to allow personal explorations of the spaces he occupies—both shared and private—to become accomplices in the emotional translation of questions that are at once intimate and universal, touching on themes such as territory, mental and reflective spaces, and memory.
Pedro has participated in group exhibitions since 2021, and with the collective he is part of (colectivo ssensível) since 2024. Highlights include Spellbound (Procur. Arte
@procur.arte , Cultural and Social Association, Lisbon, 2025), Do you need a body to cast a shadow? (Galeria Zé dos Bois
@galeriazedosbois , Lisbon, 2025), and Banho de Paragem (Collectif, Lisbon, 2024, curated by Sérgio Mah and António Júlio Duarte).
