Sara Chagas

Mixed Media Artist

Exploring identity, culture, memory and belonging through mixed-media art

I am a mixed-media artist whose practice explores identity, cultural heritage and personal experience.

Born and raised in Angola, with Portuguese heritage, my practice is shaped by the complexities of belonging to and navigating between different cultural identities. I am interested in how culture, memory, and lived experience shape how we understand ourselves and how others perceive us.

Through painting, textiles, pattern, layering and mixed-media processes, I create works that bring together personal narratives and cultural references. My use of African-inspired textiles and visual motifs allows me to investigate heritage not simply as something inherited, but as something continuously experienced, questioned and reinterpreted.

My practice is an ongoing exploration of what it means to belong — to a place, a culture, a memory, or to more than one identity at once.

About the Artist

A person with curly hair wearing a yellow shirt, examining or touching a colorful, patterned textile artwork displayed on a black and white geometric patterned background. The textile has vibrant colors like red, blue, yellow, and black, and is hung in front of a white brick wall.

A woman standing behind a multi-layered art piece featuring African print fabric and paintings with geometric patterns and colors, on a gray background.

My work develops through an intuitive process of layering materials, colour, pattern and imagery. I am particularly interested in the relationship between traditional and contemporary visual languages, and in how familiar cultural elements can be transformed into new narratives.

Each piece is developed as a visual conversation between personal experience and wider cultural histories. Rather than offering a single interpretation, I invite the viewer to find their own connection within the work.

My Practice

Materials & Process

Textiles, paint, pattern and found or constructed elements are brought together to create layered surfaces and compositions. The physical process of building each work is as important as the final image — revealing, concealing and reworking elements as the piece develops.