244. Joana Galego - Not asleep, listening

2026
Oil on linen
15 x 10 cm
Signed on Verso

Joana Galego is a contemporary artist working between drawing and painting, exploring what is left unsaid: the potentials and limitations of communication, and the contradictory nature of human relationships. Memory, imagination, and observation are central to her practice, allowing her to articulate emotions and experiences that resist language. Through delicate and psychologically charged compositions, Galego constructs spaces where intimacy, ambiguity, and vulnerability coexist.

Galego completed The Drawing Year, the MA-level postgraduate programme at the Royal Drawing School, London (2016–2017), following a BA in Fine Art – Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (2012–2016).

Recent exhibitions include Baroque / Rococo at New Art Projects, London (2026); Table Manners at Barbati Gallery, Venice (2026); Hiding Behind Gifts at Oliver Projects, London (solo, 2025); Seashells in My Mother’s Garden and the Giant Boulder Rolling Down at Isabel Sullivan Gallery, New York (solo, 2025); Art Paris Fair with Soho Revue, Paris (2025); Monotypes at Messums London (2025); jardins at Galeria Belard, Lisbon (solo, 2024); Liminality at EY Projects, Beijing (2024); A Hand is Not a Cage at Soho Revue, London (2024); mole lunar sinal at Soho Revue, London (solo, 2023); spring and all – The Sir Denis Mahon Award Show at the Royal Drawing School, London (solo, 2019); and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition, London (2019).

Awards and distinctions include being shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (2019), receiving The Sir Denis Mahon Award (2017), and the Drawing Marathon at RISD Residency Award (2017). In 2016, she received a full scholarship for The Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School and was shortlisted for both the Queen Isabel de Bragança Prize and the inaugural Paula Rego Award in Portugal. Her work is held in The Royal Collection.