ABOUT

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Lígia Oliveira is an artist and designer working at the intersection of ecology, innovation, and cultural transformation.

​Her interdisciplinary practice weaves together visual art, systems design, writing, curating, and research to explore how beauty, knowledge, and relational practices can contribute to planetary wellbeing.

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Grounded in design, art, urbanism, and contemplative inquiry, Lígia develops regenerative frameworks that respond to specific places, institutions, and ecologies. Her work takes form through research-based commissions, exhibitions, publications, curatorial programs, and long-term collaborations, often unfolding through deep listening, interspecies dialogue, and a commitment to designing with, rather than for.

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​She has collaborated with the Croatia Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, TBA21, the European Commission, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, and the Mind & Life Institute. Her work was featured at the 2024 United Nations Ocean Decade Conference and exhibited, among others, at ExperimentaDesign.

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Lígia holds a PhD in public space and urban regeneration from the University of Barcelona, and has taught and conducted research at this institution and the University of Porto. Her work has been supported by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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​Born in Porto and shaped by the southern wetlands of Ria Formosa, her practice brings a grounded, poetic lens to every project, inviting a shift from extraction to reciprocity, from fragmentation to coherence, from urgency to care.

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She is a member of the Regenerative Collective, the Centre for Studies on Planetary Wellbeing at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Gallery Climate Coalition, Design+Posthumanism Network and Rise Up for the Ocean.

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​Her work asks a simple, demanding question: how might art and design become practices of kinship in a time of ecological fracture?

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She writes regularly at Aretē.