24 Jan — 28 Feb 2026 @Porto

Your words cut me like an arrow

Installation by Miguel Ângelo Marques

The hand appears in Miguel Ângelo Marques’s work almost as an inevitable presence. It functions, in both two and three dimensions, as a record of memory and, simultaneously, as a mirror of a more intimate, personal narrative. It becomes body and image simultaneously. It emerges as an obsession within an individual narrative. By continually reappearing, the hand operates as both motif and evidence: an insistent fragment that returns to reactivate images.

In Your Words Cut Me Like An Arrow, Miguel Ângelo Marques presents an image that is both brutal and ritualistic. The wound here is not confined to pain. There is a violence that comes from the word, its weight and its precision; the word that cuts, that pierces, that punctures. Pierced by an arrow, the hand does not recoil. It remains exposed, suspended in that moment of impact. The arrow cuts through space and passes through flesh, leaving an inscription. The wound is not only pain: it is also gesture, drawing, and ritual. It is the word inscribed in the body, giving the violence of the impact a possibility of meaning.

Miguel Ângelo Marques (Guimarães, 1994) completed a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the School of Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha (2023), having previously earned a Bachelor’s degree from the same institution (2016). He founded the Unconventional Drawing School in 2020 and since then has worked on art education and art liberation projects with schools, institutions, and associations. Since 2021, he has also been part of the PALMA Collective alongside Catarina Braga, an artistic collective focused on ecological issues. He has exhibited regularly since 2015, with notable group exhibitions including Fazer Arbítrio, Centro Cultural Vila Flor (2024); Hammer Time, Zaratan Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (2023); Drowning Room, Cosmos CAC, Lisbon (2023); O Verdadeiro Lado da Manta: uma proposta de Sara & André, Centro Cultural Vila Flor, Guimarães (2022); PREMIERE at Centre d’Artes Meymac, France (2022); and Sem Medo, Casa das Artes, Tavira (2021). His solo exhibitions include Things that can be thrown, Salão dos Recusados, Leiria (2024); Os Algoritmos da Pintura, Centro de Artes das Caldas da Rainha (2021); and Resistir a todos os traumas, Galeria Verso Branco, Lisbon (2019). His artistic residencies include If this Plant could talk, OSSO, São Gregório (2023); Máscaras with Damian Ortega, Centro Botín, Santander (2022); and Unravelling the Myth, CAU Cortém (2021).