274. Lícia Santos - Luminous Roots

2025
Oil on linen
17 x 14 x 1.5 cm

Lícia Santos (b. 1998) is an Angolan artist working between Lisbon and London. Her practice is centred on painting as a space for material and emotional inquiry, working primarily with oil paint alongside sand, earth pigments, and drawing. Shaped by an ongoing engagement with the desert as both a physical and poetic reference, her work explores the relationship between the human body and landscape. Through figurative and mixed-media processes, Santos investigates states of presence and absence, using material experimentation to reflect on memory, identity, and the passage of time.

Santos completed an MFA in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2020–2022), following a BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London (2017–2020).

Recent exhibitions and residencies include Ways of Perceiving at Apsara Studio, London (2026); a residency with Hands-on Projects (2026); the Black and Global Majority Art Fair with CasildART, London (2025); a residency at the Museu Provincial do Namibe, Angola (2025); The Universe Within at Copeland Gallery, London (2024); In Search of Peace and Love Amongst the Flowers at OXO Gallery, London (2023); the Morrison & Foerster Art Prize Show at The Scalpel, London (2023); and Open Studios with V.O Curations, London (2023).

Awards and distinctions include being shortlisted for the Morrison & Foerster Art Prize (2023), receiving the Euan Uglow Memorial Scholarship at the Slade School of Fine Art (2020), and appearing as a contestant on Portrait Artist of the Year Series 7, Episode 7 on Sky Arts (2020). Her work is held in private collections in London and Lisbon.