Maria Who (Moscow, 1996) is a visual artist and performer based in Lisbon since 2022. She studied at the Stroganov Moscow State Academy of Art and Design, where she completed a Master’s degree in Art and Design, specialising in Interior Design, between 2014 and 2020. She previously attended the State School of Art from 2005 to 2010. Alongside her artistic practice, she develops interior design projects in collaboration with architects and designers.

Her rigorous artistic training has given rise to a practice that resists boundaries and control, asserting itself within a territory of openness and transience. Working between painting and performance, she engages in a dialogue with nature, place, time and imagination. She paints with oil paint and oil sticks, using both palette knife and brush in an intuitive approach. For Maria, colours are words: she believes that colour is the language of Nature, in continuous transformation.

Her canvases occupy a space between figuration and abstraction, exploring impermanence, memory and becoming through a poetics inspired by Process Philosophy.

Her artistic journey includes solo exhibitions at MAD Marvila Gallery and A Legítima.

Selected group exhibitions include CNAP 25 Anos a Celebrar a Arte, Frágil and Strong World at Metamorphose Gallery in Marbella, and Limpezas de Primavera at Galeria Graça Brandão. She has also participated in JustLX, Pla Arte and the Venice International Art Fair.