“For me, art is reality. There is no separation between the two. Some people believe that what is real is what can be touched — I believe that everything that is real is untouchable.”
Blackson Afonso (b. 1983, Angola) is a painter who lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
His practice emerges from a diasporic perspective through which the Black body is explored as a space of stillness, emotional depth, and speculative possibility. His work operates within the tension between visibility and perception: rejecting dominant frameworks of representation rooted in trauma, Afonso constructs images that resist urgency.
His figures exist in suspended states — neither narrative nor illustrative — creating space for ambiguity, projection, and introspection. Symbols recur without resolution, while meaning remains open. Rather than instructing the viewer, the work invites a slower way of looking, privileging feeling over explanation and presence over certainty.
Selected Exhibitions, Residencies, and Collections
Solo Exhibitions: Happy Blues (2022); Ascender (2025).
International Residencies: Montresso Foundation, Marrakech.
Collections: Museu da Guarda.
Selected Works
3 works
