What does a landscape look like when you look at it through a microscope?

My paintings begin with this question.

I am an artist based in Lisbon, and for the past several years I have been exploring the natural world at a microscopic scale. Using a microscope to study biological material, I transform tiny structures — cells, tissues, plants and organic forms — into large-scale paintings that exist somewhere between landscape, biology and abstraction.

This autumn, I have been invited to take part in La Wayaka Current, an artist-led research residency in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

The Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth, yet it is home to extraordinary forms of life that have adapted to survive in extreme conditions. I will spend several weeks there observing its ecosystems, collecting visual material, studying local flora and learning from the people who have lived with and understood this landscape for generations.

I want to look closely at plants such as llareta, tamarugo, algarrobo and the remarkable cacti and other species that survive in this environment. I am interested in what happens when we move between scales — from an enormous desert landscape to the microscopic structures within a single plant.

But beneath this research is a more personal question:

What does it mean to belong somewhere?

As a Portuguese national with Chinese, Jewish-German and New Zealand heritage, I have spent much of my adult life moving between countries and cities before returning to Portugal. Increasingly, my work has become a way of thinking about home, intimacy and our relationship with the places we inhabit.

The Atacama feels like a particularly powerful place to explore these ideas. At first, its landscape can appear almost impossibly alien and inhospitable. Yet it is also home — to plants, animals and communities that have developed extraordinary ways of living within it.

I want to understand that tension: between unfamiliarity and belonging, fragility and resilience, the enormous and the microscopic.

This residency is not simply an opportunity to travel somewhere extraordinary. The landscape itself is part of the research.

I will bring what I discover in Chile back to my studio in Lisbon, where I will spend the following months developing a new body of large-scale paintings from the microscopic forms and visual material I encounter there.

The journey will therefore continue long after I leave the desert: from field research, to microscope, to studio, to painting, and eventually exhibiting the work produced from this experience.

Why I need your help

I am an independent artist, and although I have been invited to participate in the residency, the cost of making the journey to Chile is beyond what I can currently cover on my own.

I am raising €3,500 to help cover:

The La Wayaka residency fee

Flights to and from Chile

Travel and essential expenses during the residency

Research and artistic materials

I have already committed my own savings towards making this possible, but I need additional support to bridge the gap.

Please help me make this dream come true!