rita vargas
Rita Vargas was born in 1981, in Évora, Portugal. She has studied in the University of Évora and in Winchester School of Arts, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, where she started to learn the Printmaking techniques and continued her Sculpture studio practice. She finishes her studies in 2005 and teaches Visual Arts in Secondary Schools for some time. She was awarded with a grant from Instituto Camões (Portugal) / Centro Cultural de Tóquio in partnership with NPO (Japan) and worked in an artistic residence in Japan, isolated in the mountains for one year. She returned to the Visual Arts as a teacher in Azores, in the middle or the Atlantic Ocean for one more year. She was again awarded by the Ministry of the Culture from Portugal and worked in an International Internship (Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking). This year, 2010, she worked in an artistic residence in Cultural Center from Évora - Stone Sculpture Department (PT), and in Villa Magdalena K., Werkstattprojekt, (selbstverwaltetes queer-feministisches), Hamburg (DE). This winter, 2010, returned to Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking and was acepted by the University of Jyväskylä for her Doctoral Studies in the Department of Art and Culture Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Finland.
Her work has been represented internationally and in public and private collections, including de Visual Arts Department of the University of Évora (Portugal), Galeria 21 (Évora, Portugal), Associação de Gravadores de Évora (Printmaking Association of Évora), Galeria ArteContempo (Lisbon), Instituto Camões /Centro Cultural de Tóquio (Camões Institute/Cultural Centre of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan), Nishiaizu International Art Village (Shingo/Japan), Kentaro Sato Art Village, (Niigata, Toyomi/Japan), Galleria Becker and Jyväskylän Taidemuseo (Finland).
She has worked with Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos in Tavira and in the Casa das Artes (Art Gallery), in the summers of 2005 and 2006, Portugal.
Some of her works have been published in PhD Thesis and Art Theory Books, also has been represented in Art catalogues from Japan, Newspapers and Printmaking Festival Book (Évora, Portugal). She also contributed to the creation of the Paintings from the movie “Le Botanist”, directed by Francis Manceau.