With a multidisciplinary practice that bridges artistic and clinical approaches, Maria Bernardino’s work has been exploring the relationship with others: in encounters, caregiving, and offering assistance. This attentiveness is visible in her collaborations on various collective projects as well as her parallel training in Traditional Chinese Medicine. How can an artistic object also act as a caregiver, vigilant and protective? How does the performativity of artistic action approach or diverge from the performativity of therapeutic action?

Maria Bernardino (Macau, 1992), a visual artist and specialist in Chinese medicine, works at the Letra A studio in Lisbon. Her work spans drawing, sculpture, as well as the use of words and performance. With an increasing focus on collaborative projects that challenge the conventional individualized practice, she is interested in exploring didactic and obscure subjects (alongside Luísa Abreu) and methods where playfulness and care are central to the artistic process (currently in collaboration with Catarina Real and Sofia Pires).

Spliting her time between artistic and clinical practices, she also seeks to consolidate the sensory and therapeutic potential that exists in both art and Chinese medicine.