João Penalva, born in 1949 in Lisbon, is a Portuguese artist who has been living in the UK since his studies at the Chelsea School of Art in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His career as a visual artist developed out of his early work as a dancer, where he collaborated with Pina Bausch and Gerhard Bohner. Today, his artistic work primarily focuses on storytelling through the composition of images and elaborate, often beguiling narratives. Penalva is best known for his large-scale, mixed-media installations, as well as his more intimate works with video and slide projections, sound, drawing, painting, and found materials. Through his mixed-media approach, Penalva explores different forms of narrative as well as the relationships between images, text, language, and sound. Penalva’s storytelling is often fractured, presenting juxtaposed narrative elements, which allow the viewers agency in their interpretation.

João Penalva graduated in 1981 from the Chelsea School of Art in London. He has been teaching at the Malmö Art Academy at the University of Lund since 2002. In 2009, he received the Bryan Robertson Trust Award, London. In 2003, he was awarded the DAAD Berlin Artist’s Residency. Penalva represented Portugal at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (1996) and the Biennale di Venezia (2001). Solo exhibitions include Trondheim Kunstmuseum (2014), Kunsthallen Brandts (2012), Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (2011), Lunds Konsthall (2010), Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006), Serralves Museum and Ludwig Museum in Budapest (2005), The Power Plant (2003), Rooseum, Malmö (2002), and Camden Arts Centre, London, and Tramway, Glasgow (2000). Group exhibitions include the Wellcome Collection (2017), Museum Folkwang and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2015), Tate Modern (2014), K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2012), Haus der Kunst (2011), Hayward Gallery (2010), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2007), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2006), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2003), the Biennale of Sydney (2002), and the Berlin Biennale (2001). João Penalva lives and works in London.

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