09 May — 13 Jun 2026 @Évora

Maria Ana Duarte Silva, by Janis Dellarte

Maria Ana Duarte Silva is the birth name of Janis Dellarte. In her latest exhibition, “Maria Silva” (the most Portuguese name in Portugal), she created, around a certain Portugueseness on the verge of extinction, a collective “tuga” soul, a kind of “lacework on TV.”

In this autobiographical exhibition, and not only, she chooses to adopt her own name as a concept (those who know her understand that names are an issue), in the year she moves to Arraiolos, Alentejo, where most of these pieces were created. “They say the Duarte Silva family is from Évora Monte.”

Janis Dellarte was born in 1989 in Lisbon, where she lives and works. Janis creates sculptural hybrids, performative textile pieces, ritualistic objects, and interactive installations through crochet, knitting, and her research into textile traditions that are on the verge of extinction — the nearly lost art of handmade craft. She lived in Madrid for nine years, where she studied Fine Arts, and moved to London in 2008. She stayed there for seven years, completing an Art & Design Foundation at Chelsea College of Art and earning a degree in Textiles and Surface Design from Buckinghamshire New University. She also completed a course in Experimental Jewellery at Central Saint Martins and became a Master in Knitted Textiles at the Royal College of Art. In the summer of 2014, she returned to Portugal, her homeland, where she has lived ever since. She traveled across the country learning its textile traditions. In Lisbon, she attended the workshop “Strategies for the Contemporary Performer,” by Vânia Rovisco, and the course “Portuguese Performance Art: Performers and Performances” at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She collaborates with designers, musicians, dancers, and performers, and is part of artivist initiatives such as Linha Vermelha and Zero Waste Lab — advocating for a more conscious future with less plastic. This year, she moved to the Alentejo Coast, where she dedicated herself to a project focused on collecting plastic waste from the beaches and creating the pieces presented in this exhibition. She has exhibited in London, New York, Jalisco (Mexico), Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Porto, and Lisbon. Highlights include exhibitions at Palácio das Artes in Porto, Museu da Eletricidade and MUDE in Lisbon, the opening of Z42 in Rio de Janeiro, The Java Projects in New York, and MilMa and Geddes Gallery in London.