The work of Maria Condado (Lisbon, Portugal, 1981) engages with figuration through a pictorial language in which the moving mark constructs space and structures the composition. The environment moves, envelops, and activates the figure, at times triggering a process of camouflage so dense and expressive that it ultimately obscures the very presence of the body.

Here, figures drawn from different moments in art history are deliberately decontextualised and inserted into a new visual framework, bringing them onto the same temporal plane. The image ceases to be autonomous and recognisable through its origin; instead, it is the pictorial environment itself that determines what we are able to recognise as a body. By removing the surroundings that once provided these figures with context and meaning, Maria Condado brings images from different historical periods into coexistence within a shared present.

Painting thus becomes a space of temporal suspension, where references charged with symbolic and historical resonances cease to respond exclusively to their origins and instead participate in the construction of a new image.

In this work, the YouTube algorithm’s recommendations become a personal inventory. By gathering records of videos consumed at a specific moment, the artist transforms a seemingly random sequence into a kind of self-portrait—constructed from the images and stimuli that shape their experience of the world. Echoing the idea that the world constitutes itself as a representation for a subject, these digital visual landscapes reveal how what we perceive depends on the conditions that structure our gaze. The work thus questions the construction of identity at the intersection of individual perception, the representation of reality, and technological conditioning, exploring the boundaries between what we choose to see and what we are given to see.