SAMINA — Lisbon, Portugal

“Execution is different for me mostly in terms of physicality. Painting a wall, depending on the size and logistics, demands way more from your body than painting a canvas or on paper at a studio.But for me, the biggest difference concerns the fact that when you paint a wall outside you are painting something that belongs to a certain social and architectural context and that has a direct influence on my painting.”

Samina, who was born in Setúbal, Portugal, was in contact with the world of the arts, mainly photography, drawing and painting, from an early age via his father, a self-taught artist. When he was 14 he started spreading stickers with friends around the streets before graduating to the world of muralism and urban art. In the following years he developed his own style using stencils and in 2010 felt comfortable enough to produce bigger and more consistent work. During his studies in architecture he discovered a love for geometry and a bigger interest in connecting paintings with their urban context. He has produced a body of work putting together a language of his own, using his stencil technique to paint human faces surrounded by geometric compositions, in a constant search for a perfect balance between those two worlds.