FLAD selects six young artists for the Flechada program

FLAD selected the six projects supported in the 2026 edition of Flechada – Support Program for First Solo Exhibitions, an initiative that supports emerging artists in holding their first solo exhibition. Each of the artists will receive a funding grant of up to 5 thousand euros to carry out their exhibition project.

The selected artists are:

• Inês Leal, who will present her exhibition at the Municipal Gallery of Porto, as part of the partnership between FLAD and ÁGORA – Cultura e Desporto do Porto;
• Bianca Dias, at the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom, in Peniche;
• Mariana Machado, at Espaço MIRA, in Porto;
• Isadora Alves, at Salto, in Lisbon;
• Bernardo Ferreira, at Teodoro W., in Porto;
• Francisca Jardim, at the Mercês Cultural Space, in Lisbon.

Created by FLAD, the Flechada program is aimed at artists between the ages of 24 and 31, of Portuguese nationality or residing in Portugal for at least five years, who have not yet held a solo exhibition. The objective is to facilitate access to exhibition opportunities and support the entry of new artists into the professional circuit of contemporary art.

The first solo exhibition often represents a decisive moment in an artist’s career, allowing them to present a work in a structured way, consolidate an artistic practice and establish contact with audiences, curators and institutions. Flechada seeks to respond to the challenges that many young creators face in accessing exhibition spaces, supporting the development of their projects and promoting articulation with professional structures in the cultural sector.

This year’s edition had the partnership of ÁGORA – Cultura e Desporto do Porto, which will allow the presentation of one of the selected projects at the Galeria Municipal do Porto. Inês Leal’s exhibition will be presented in that space in the first quarter of 2027, reinforcing FLAD and ÁGORA’s commitment to promoting new talents and supporting the renewal of the contemporary art scene.

With the Flechada program, FLAD continues to invest in the creation of concrete opportunities for artists at the beginning of their careers, contributing to the development of the national artistic fabric and the emergence of new voices in the visual arts.

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About the selected artists:

“The Fort of Peniche as a first home” | Bianca Dias

Location: National Museum of Resistance and Freedom, Peniche

Bio: Bianca Dias (Barreiro, 2000) approached moving images in the Cinema and Video course at the António Arroio Artistic Secondary School and it was in the Sound and Image degree in Caldas da Rainha that she materialized her family’s memories of migration through documentary cinema and other media. He is dedicated to the research of personal archives and oral testimonies about the refugee center of Forte de Peniche, his family’s first home in Portugal. His films have already circulated through national festivals such as Doclisboa, Exposição “Back2Black”, Festival Entre Olhares, Festival Connect, Marmostra International Film Festival. Retrospectives of his films were shown on Channel 180 (2023) and Cineclube CR (2022). Parallel to her affective research, she is dedicated to cultural production and mediation, having worked on projects such as IndieLisboa IFF, Doc’s Kingdom – International Seminar on Documentary Film, Estúdio CRUA, Filmes da Mãe.

“Bacchae” (working title) | Inês Leal

Location: Porto Municipal Gallery

Bio: Inês Leal (2001, São João da Madeira) lives and works in Porto. Artist, researcher and designer. Her artistic and research practice assumes a collaborative, essayistic and experimental character, materializing in the creation of installations and series, resulting in hybrid objects sustained by research, experimentation and disciplinary crossing.

 

“Fury, Fury Against the End of the Night” | Isadora Alves

Location: Salto, Lisbon

Bio: Isadora Alves (b. 1996, Lisbon) is an actress and artist, working in the areas of performance, theater, cinema and writing. Her projects often develop as performances in the landscape, where light emerges as a central research material.

In collaboration with scientists and local communities, he follows phenomena such as glacier retreat and volcanic activity, exploring ecological issues and forms of sensory perception. She is a co-founder of the interdisciplinary collective Sympoietic Society, whose research on the disappearance of glaciers addresses climate grief, interspecific co-creation, and situated narrative practices through embodied exercises and social practices.

He has taught at several international institutions and regularly collaborates as a performer with different artists and directors.

 

“Triads” | Bernardo Ferreira

Location: Teodoro W., Porto

Bio: Bernardo Ferreira (b. 1997, Torres Vedras, Portugal; based in Hamburg, Germany). Through the antagonism between linguistic precision and bodily hypermobility, the practice appropriates neoliberal aesthetics to produce constellations of fragmented objects and words — inhabiting the productive friction between fixity and fluidity, where the excess of the queer body paradoxically reveals embarrassment.

 

“Bear Pareidolia” | Mariana Machado

Location: Espaço MIRA, Porto

Bio: Mariana Machado (Porto, 2000) is an artist and independent researcher. In 2023, she completed her Degree in Cinema at the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University, having continued her studies in the Master’s Degree in Sound and Image: Specialization in Digital and Sound Arts at the same institution. Over the years, he has traced a path that passes through experimental cinema and installation, developing an interest in working with cinematographic structures and visual perception. His research has revolved around modelling, programming and experimentation with digital technologies. Thus, the current work focuses not only on the moving image, but also on sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, engineering, and issues in the philosophy of language and mathematics. Recent works include the installation pieces “Eclipse do Meio” (2024), “5hz_thrsh.gatc_v1” (2025) and “Tusi-data / reading-as” (2025), presented at the Serralves Foundation, the School of Arts and the independent space Branda. Research is thus developed in parallel with artistic practice, in which the feedback between the two sustains its development. From April 2026, until June 2027, she is part of the research team of the project CARCERART: Carceral Designs: Gender, Space, and Counter-Narratives of Confinement, at the University of Minho, with an assistant researcher fellowship. In parallel, he writes regularly for the online edition Umbigo Space.

 

“Sub Umbra” | Francisca Jardim

Venue: Mercês Cultural Space, Lisbon

Bio: Francisca Jardim (Porto, 1997). He lives and works in Lisbon.

Education:

2026 Individual Project, Ar.Co – Centre for Art and Visual Communication

2022-2025 Advanced Course Visual Arts, Ar.Co – Center for Art and Visual Communication

2017-2021 Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts Lisbon

2013-2016 Product Design, António Arroio Artistic School