Mafalda Vasconcelos: A Personal Narrative
Artist Mafalda Vasconelos explores identity and womanhood through her captivating portraits. In her quest to learn more about the women who came before her, Mafalda investigates her ancestry through memory, experience, and storytelling.
Tell me about your background and where your creative journey began.
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and raised in Mozambique, where I lived until I was 19 years old. I am biracial, my dad is from a large Portuguese family whilst my mother and her family are native Mozambican. I have a BA Hons in Fashion Design and a MA in entrepreneurship. I worked in fashion for a few years, but I knew then that I wanted to design more than just clothes or accessories. The freedom that art gives me is something that I value a lot and am very grateful for. My work comes in many forms, mainly handmade drawings, digitally transformed pieces and oil paintings. To me, art is a way of exploring emotions, memories and how these inform my identity. I am now based in beautiful Melbourne, Australia where my partner is from and I love the art scene here. I have always been a very creative person, since I was a young child. Probably because I was the youngest child and spent a lot of time on my own, being creative entertained me and kept me curious about the world.
How has your work shifted and evolved over time? What led you to focus on portraiture?
My work has evolved greatly in the past few years. I did fashion illustration for a couple of years, before I went full-time with my art practice. The illustration work I made was purely fashion focused, was constrained and saturated and had no particular meaning behind it apart from my cultural references. Now, my work is less digital and more focused on drawings and oil paintings. My family is from the Nharinga ethnic group. I found out that due to cultural assimilation their culture has become obsolete, there is nothing I can learn about it through literature or even online. My work has become a way of exploring that culture and filling in the gaps of who my ancestors were, their beliefs and folk stories in order to inform my identity of this narrative. It has become introspective and I often reflect on my own relationship with womanhood, looking at the women who raised me in Mozambique, but also exploring emotions and memories through simplistic portraits and female form. Portraits are essential to telling these stories.
Which artists have impacted your work?
Roberto Chichorro, Malangatana Ngwenya and many other artists that I watched painting or saw their works in small markets across Maputo, in Mozambique.
What does a typical day in the studio look like for you, and how has the current pandemic impacted your practice?
I usually wake up at 7 am, journal for a bit and then get ready for the day. As I have my coffee I reply to emails and do some admin work. I have a home office and studio which I love and am so grateful for. At around 10 am I head to the post office to drop off shipments of artworks sold. After that I go home and paint for the rest of the day or pack more pieces for shipping. I usually stop working at 7pm, walk my dog and then I make dinner. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and we have been in lockdown since March basically. The pandemic has made me more obsessed with work and productivity, which has been good in terms of results and has kept me entertained in a time when I can’t do anything else.
What are your greatest accomplishments as an artist thus far?
Having found my own unique style of creating artwork is an accomplishment that I am extremely grateful for. I am also very grateful to have found so much purpose and meaning in what I do.
What are your future goals and aspirations?
I hope to be able to show my work in the UK, US and hopefully soon in my home country Mozambique as well.
Website: www.mmvce.com
Instagram: @mmvce