Le temps s'envole, les portraits jaunissent (Les Saisons)

Ana Jotta was born in 1946. She currently lives in Lisbon.

Since the 1980s, Ana Jotta has been developing a fascinating and undisciplined body of work. Although she likes to paint and draw, her favorite activity consists of collecting images, objects and words. Like some sort of visual DJ, she extracts, digests, mix, transforms and recontextualizes elements from various sources, popular and learned combined, saving them from oblivion while revitalizing them.

Her shows include embroidery, photographs, wallpapers, collages and assemblages, all elements crafted and displayed in such a way that the artist (her hand, her ego, her “style”) seems to play hide-and-seek with the viewers. Indeed, through her works, Ana Jotta invites us to engage in playful and insightful explorations of not only our visual culture and art history, but also her secretive and exuberant mind.

One of Portugal’s most prominent artists, she has had retrospective exhibitions at the Museu de Serralves (Porto) in 2005 and Culturgest (Lisbon) in 2014. She has also gained international recognition through major shows in Austria, France, Germany, UK, etc. This is the second time her work is shown in Japan: in 1997, she exhibited in the late “Sagacho exhibition space.”

Recent solo shows include Don’t flinch, don’t fall, leave the light on, greengrassi, London, UK, 2019 ; Parterre, Guimarães, Vienna, Austria, 2019 ; DAS - IST - DAS?, Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Germany, 2018 ; Portuguese handicraft, Etablissement d'en face, Brussels, Belgium, 2016 ; TI RE LI RE, Le Crédac, Ivry-Sur-Seine, France, 2016.

Ana Jotta is represented by Miguel Nabinho Gallery (Lisbon), ProjecteSD (Barcelona), and greengrassi (London).