Francisco Vidal (1978) - Still Free

Technique: acrylic on cardboard
Dimension: 50x50 cm
Title: “Still Free”

Framed with glass

Painting by the painter Francisco Vidal, whose work stands out for being vibrant, politically engaged, and deeply rooted in his transcultural African and European heritages. His work fuses a multiplicity of contemporary artistic languages with reflections on colonialism, identity, and the African diaspora; its strong colors express the vivacity of his work, also merging the movement of his brushstrokes, heavily influenced by 1980s hip-hop culture, graffiti, and Pop Art. It features powerful, sometimes illegible, calligraphic lines that recall “street writing” and urban muralism.
Perfectly packaged and shipped in a cardboard box.

Biography Francisco Vidal
He was born in Lisbon in 1978. He is Portuguese, Angolan, and Cape Verdean and lives between Luanda, Angola, and Lisbon, Portugal. He holds a degree in Plastic Arts from the Escola Superior de Artes e Design das Caldas da Rainha and completed an advanced Visual Arts course at the Escola de Artes Visuais Maumaus in Lisbon.
Francisco Vidal has developed, over the last fifteen years, a clearly autobiographical artistic practice, though this should not be confused with mere self-promotion or a self-referential stance; rather, it is the intimate extension of himself, through continued, obsessively colored and drawn pictorial translation of his individuality and identity in an eternal work-in-progress.
Born in Portugal to Angolan and Cape Verdean parents, the artist combines divergent aesthetic influences—such as cubism, comics, African patterns, and the 1980s hip-hop culture—with contemporary graffiti and street art. His practice, through drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, reflects across the reminiscences of his origins—a transcultural upbringing rooted in the intersection of Angolan, Cape Verdean, and Portuguese cultures—resulting in a vibrantly and irreverently painted body of work. An example of this visual melting pot is this exhibition, “Oficina Tropical,” at Zet Gallery in Braga, temporarily closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in which he presents nearly a hundred works, largely conceived for this venue, exploring the multiplicity of colors, ideas, supports, and references employed by the artist.
Vidal, reflecting possibilities of aesthetic expression in relation to society and Portuguese and Angolan anniversaries, ascribes significance to a work deeply rooted in his transcultural heritages. Indeed, his works address themes such as race, cultural miscegenation, and the African diaspora, which mirror social concerns and his own self-awareness as an individual, as exemplified by the works he presents in this new series. In this exhibition and, by extension, across the artist’s entire oeuvre, the fury of color and the freedom of drawing fuse. A remix of references and influences, in free association, that reflects the authentic poetics of contemporary creativity embraced by multiculturality.
Mostly composed of drawings and paintings, this new series of works illustrates the most significant happenings in the artist’s life in the months leading up to the exhibition’s opening. Through form, line, and color, everything around him is absorbed into painting and drawing. Particularly notable are the works where a deep human nature shines through, such as the choice to represent Moussa Marega, a clear critique of the racial injustice recently suffered by the footballer.
Now reflection, now critique, the drawings and paintings multiply in a surrounding plastic journey, revealing tacit marks of social concerns, universal and timeless. Representing this constant social reflection, are the disconcerting paintings of cotton flower sabers, which are part of this exhibition. Despite their cheerful and colorful composition, these paintings hide a symbolic reference to the times of slavery. The works allude to the 1961 battle at Cassanges, a cotton-producing region now regarded as the beginning of the Angolan War of Independence. In 1961, under the Portuguese colonial regime, workers revolted in Baixa de Cassanje dissatisfied with forced labor conditions, and Portuguese troops dropped a napalm bomb on the cotton fields, which caused a high number of deaths.
Whether in revealing lesser-known historical pasts (as in the series of portraits he made of the many figures who contributed to contemporary Angolan thought), or in representing current contemporaneity (constructed from everyday relational events) or in seeking a socially engaged future (which includes his proposal to create schools directed at arts education); Vidal’s work consistently reflects social concerns in the pursuit of an Angolan hegemony which he calls “Luuanda Rising.”
Grounded in Afro-futurist movement, Francisco Vidal charts scenarios of a country past, present, and future through an elaborate imagined construction consciously aware of a postcolonial condition involuntarily, never detaching from his commitment to contemporary reality, be it social, political, or artistic.

Francisco Vidal is not new to this, and his name rings here and there. He earned a degree in Plastic Arts from the Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão de Arte & Design das Caldas da Rainha and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University in New York. He is a pivotal figure in painting, drawing, and gesture that becomes color, Africa, and magic. Beginning at the new millennium, the artist’s works have entered prestigious national and international collections, notably the EDP Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, or the Cachola Collection, among many others.
Vidal’s work spans painting to installation, resulting from a meticulous, ongoing reflection on the discursive possibilities of plastic expression and aesthetics in relation to Portuguese and Angolan societies and current affairs. In this sense, his work is imbued with historical and political connotations.
Alongside his solo practice, since 2012 Francisco Vidal has been developing, with Rita GT, Antonio Ole, and Nelo Teixeira, the virtual studio e-Studio: a collective of Luanda-based artists with a space for Projects and a gallery, with a regular program of exhibitions and art education.
Francisco Vidal studied at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York (USA), where he earned his Master’s degree.
He is currently selected for Angola’s Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by António Ole with deputy curator Antónia Gaeta.
Francisco Vidal has been exhibiting since 2005, with notable solo exhibitions such as Água e Luz, Instituto Camões, Luanda, Angola (2014); AIR – African Industrial Revolution at UNAP, Luanda, Angola (2012); Água, Galeria 111, Lisbon (2007); Ecotone, Galeria 111, Porto (2007); Subbus, Galeria 111, Lisbon (2006). Notable group exhibitions include Mabaxa, Soso Gallery – Contemporary African Art, Luanda (2012); Republic, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2011); MFA ThesisExhibition, Fisher Landau Center for the Art, Long Island, USA (2011); Povo, EDP Foundation (2010); O Dia pela Noite, Lux, Lisbon (2010); and Exchanging Glances, Instituto Camões in Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique (2007).
In 2005, he was selected for the EDP – New Artists Awards, and in 2013 he was one of 10 artists included in the documentary series Geração 25 de Abril by Abílio Leitão and Alexandre Melo.
His work is represented in several collections, notably the EDP Foundation Collection, PLMJ Foundation, Sindika Dokolo Collection, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.