Barbara Portailler is a visual artist and researcher based between Saint-Denis and Lisbon. Her work spans photography, textile art, ceramics, and storytelling, exploring cycles of materiality, ecology, and collective memory. Combining DIY techniques with aesthetic precision, she navigates photography’s dualities: vibrant realism and poetic idealism, logic and emotion, nature and its artistic imitation.
Her pieces on textile, paper, and ceramic examine light, exposure, and time. Works such as Heureux contretemps, Faire composter nos pensées, and Cinquante nuances d’ombres en fleurs reflect this exploration of transformation and representation.
In 2022, she co-founded TAB LAB, an eco-conscious photography studio at House of Haeg in Lisbon, together with designer Amande Haeghen. There, she expanded her practice through cyanotype printing and ceramics, drawing inspiration from Portugal’s blue tones and sunlit landscapes. For Lisbon by Design, she presents large-scale textile works printed with cyanotype ink on upcycled fabric and exposed in the gardens of Lisbon. These pieces reflect on the time it takes for trees to grow shade and for us to pause within it.
Barbara began her career with the Artists Angels for Madagascar charity auction at Christie’s Paris in 2013 and later earned a PhD in Arts from Sorbonne University. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public and private collections. She recently concluded a two-year photographic residency documenting the 2024 Olympic Games and is currently preparing new work in São Tomé and Príncipe for the 2026 Biennale.
http://www.barbaraportailler.com
https://www.instagram.com/barbara_tab_portailler/
Photos courtesy of © Barbara Portailler
