Mab.ko is a multidisciplinary artist based in Porto, Portugal. Trained as an architect in France, her practice is rooted in research on design scale and composition, through the development of a personal lexicon of symbols.
She follows a two-dimensional working protocol in which drawing is the fundamental medium, as well as the matter for patterns and archetypal forms. She then engages in a systematic, ritualistic approach where each design research results in a collection of illustrations. Her body of work mainly takes shape in multiple series of three-dimensional objects, from micro-scale talismans made of ceramic to more domestic and large, cardboard and plaster sculptures. These objects are both the apparatus and the artwork itself, coming from direct projections of her drawings. Mab.ko also develops various series of acrylic, pastel, and ink paintings, thus giving another assembled body to her illustrations.
Through her practice, Mab.ko seeks to develop an iconography rooted in the ordinary, exploring both the invisible forms of the landscape and the layers of memory. Her work aims to sublimate these elements, both in the sense of elevating them to an aesthetic or spiritual dimension, and in the sense of shifting them from one state to another, letting them express another narrative.
Starting from the material and its plasticity, she explores the transformation of everyday fragments into works that carry mystery and are integrated into a sensitive language.
Afinidades – Award 2025
Winner of the Afinidades Contemporary Ceramics Award, organized by the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis and the Quarteirão Criativo Association. The work « Existe uma Importância Psicogeográfica da Cidade » was selected by the jury from among 40 artists featured in the collective exhibition, in recognition of the conceptual strength and material sensitivity of the proposal.
November 2025
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis – Porto, Portugal
Percurso – Exhibition 2025
« Percurso propõe uma deriva pelo espaço, estruturada em três momentos, cada um composto por séries de esculturas, em que a cerâmica se articula com outros materiais, padrões e formas. Estes sub-percursos são instalados em espaços com características próprias — cor, iluminação, escala —, que se transformam através das cenografias concebidas para intensificar a experiência sensorial dos objectos expostos.”
Rossana Mendes Fonseca
September 2025
CRU Creativhub – Porto, Portugal
Caractère – Exhibition 2025
The exhibition Caractère brings together eight paintings from the homonymous series and two sculptures from the Rite series. In Caractère (2021), lines, blocks of color, and geometric patterns construct a visual language akin to an invented alphabet, in which each canvas appears as a fragment of symbolic writing. In Rite (2022), vertical stoneware and ceramic sculptures evoke totemic forms, intensifying the ritual, protective, and contemplative dimension that runs throughout Mab.ko’s work.
September – December 2025
Museu Quinta de Santigao – Leça da Palmeira, Portugal
Corrente de Ar – Exhibition 2025
Corrente de Ar exists for those who are taking their first steps in art. Whether they are young creators or people who discovered art later in life.
We use unconventional spaces—apartments, warehouses, pavilions—places with their own history that create proximity between artist and audience. There are no formal requirements as in traditional galleries. It is a territory for experimentation where you can present your work as it is, not as it “should be.”
From 77 to 160 applications in 4 years—we are a key player in democratizing access to exhibition spaces for emerging artists and renewing the contemporary art scene.
September 2025
Pavilhões da Mitra – Lisbon, Portugal
Afinidades – Exhibition 2025
The second edition of the Afinidades program, organized by the Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis (Porto, Portugal) and the Quarteirão Criativo association, is dedicated to contemporary ceramics. Curated by Vítor Reis, the exhibition presents 40 original pieces inspired by Pieter Claesz’s Still Life (1645), in a collective reflection on memory, matter, and modernity.
For this exhibition, Mab.ko presented the work Existe uma importância psicogeográfica da cidade, a set of 25 glazed ceramics. This collection of sculptures stems from a practice that seeks to transform fragments of the everyday into objects of aesthetic and sometimes spiritual value.
July – November 2025
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis – Porto, Portugal
Bico – Exhibition 2025
The BICO program is a cultural cooperation project between Spain and Portugal that stems from the desire to foster creative links and an artistic community between the two countries. Promoted by Cortex Frontal (Arraiolos, Portugal) and LEA Lab of Experimental Art (Madrid, Spain), in collaboration with Appleton (Lisbon, Portugal), it is presented as a multi-phase program that includes the creation and exhibition of works, the exchange of artists in month-long residencies in the neighboring country, and the presentation of projects to the different communities of each institution.
June – July 2025
Appleton Gallery – Lisbon, Portugal
Where Light Meets the Invisible – Exhibition 2025
Aquisições – Collection 2024
Organized by the Municipal Platform for Contemporary Art Support, the Aquisições project aims to revitalize the Municipal Art Collection and enhance Porto’s artistic heritage, documenting the city’s artistic practice through the acquisition of new works.
For the 2024 edition, two works by Mab.ko were selected: the sculpture Totem and the painting Polyptyque 04.
August 2024
Porto, Portugal
FAAP – Residency 2024
Since 2005, the FAAP Artistic Residency – São Paulo has been welcoming national and international artists every semester to the historic Lutetia building in downtown São Paulo. During the residency periods, the program promotes Open Studio events where artists can showcase their creative processes and works to the public. In addition, residents are invited to participate in activities with the institution’s teachers and students, including courses in Visual Arts.
October – December 2024
São Paulo, Brasil
GlogauAIR – Residency 2024
GlogauAIR is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 by the Spanish artist Chema Alvargonzalez with the intention to create a meeting point between artists from all disciplines to work in collaboration, expanding their practice in terms of material, format, and style in the city of Berlin.
July – September 2024
Online Program
Duplex – Residency 2024
During her residency, Mab.ko continued to develop her personal vocabulary, composed of symbols, colors, and patterns. Through a consistently systemic practice, she enriches her repertoire of archetypes. She also questions the purpose of the pieces she produces, seeking to connect them to one another around a common link, like words coming together to form a sentence. Her research also focuses on the notion of ritual, both in her process of production and in the expression of the works themselves.
May – June 2024
Lisbon, Portugal
Sanctuaire – Exhibition 2023
Allmo presents Sanctuaire, an exhibition by French artist Mab.ko.
Through a series of acrylic paintings and paper sculptures, the artist invites us into her world of icons and totems to be worshipped. This collection of brightly colored works, with their architectural motifs and repeated symbols, bears witness to the artist’s own mythological language. Using the particularities of space, the artist evokes the atmosphere of rites and sacred practices, and stages works that demand to be felt more than understood.
December 2023 – February 2024
Allmo Studio – Porto, Portugal
MNJC – Award 2022
With her piece Totem, Mab.ko received the award in the Sculpture category at the Mostra Nacional Jovens Criadores, where she was nominated alongside a thousand other artists.
The Mostra Nacional Jovens Criadores is a competition for young artists living in Portugal. Created in 1997, the 2022 Edition was organised as a three days event of exhibitions and art performances. , curated by Gerador, an independent platform of Journalism, Culture & Education.
MNJC Interview
December 2022
Lisboa, Portugal
Contemplation – Exhibition 2022
Contemplation is Mab.ko first solo exhibition. The works pursue the artist’s investigation of symbolic languages and her relationship to the sacred. Holding small cult places and symbols belonging to the artist’s own vocabulary, the exhibition explores a dimension of contemplation and worship. By using geometric or playful figures, while balancing bright and discreet colors on large and small format objects, Mab.ko creates a vivid and, at the same time, rigid environment. Through a series of acrylic paintings recalling sacred icons, ceramics holding religious reminiscences, and paper sculptures as sanctuaries, Contemplation is proposing the affinity to a new possible faith, personal rites, and fetishes.
June 2022
MACS – Porto, Portugal
MACS – Studio Project
Founded by French artist Mab.ko and Italian ceramist TOBE Atelier, MACS is an artistic and cultural association located in the heart of Porto. It offers a dynamic venue for exhibitions and cultural events, as well as a creative hub for international artists and artisans.
Since 2021
Porto, Portugal
Mab.ko 