ON VIEW
May 7 – 16, 2026

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, May 7, 5 – 7 pm

Stephen Medeiros

stephenmedeirosstudio.com
@stephenmedeiros

Stephen is a research-based interdisciplinary artist exploring beautiful disruptions through materiality, pattern, and performative acts as a means of making space to identify himself within his Portuguese heritage. He is the grand prize winner of the Lincoln Center’s 2025 Contemporary Art Survey in Fort Collins, Colorado, and an associate artist with the Boston Sculptors Gallery. Stephen’s work has been exhibited in group shows, including Beautiful Disruptions at Boston Sculptors Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts; MERGE at Dorrence Hamilton Gallery in Newport, Rhode Island; Prologue to Spring at 82 Parris in Portland, Maine; and Maine College of Art & Design’s 2026 MFA Thesis exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine. He has taught in the Art and Design Departments at University of New Haven, Salve Regina University, and CT State Community College’s Gateway Campus. He has given artist talks at Salve Regina University and served as a guest critic during their undergraduate portfolio reviews. Prior to building his studio practice, Stephen cultivated a long-standing 20-year career as an Art Director across multiple New York City advertising agencies. Stephen earned a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in Art History from Boston University in 2003. He was born in Swansea, Massachusetts, and currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island.

I am a research-based, interdisciplinary artist. My practice explores beautiful disruption as a methodology to self-identify within my Portuguese heritage and its traditional practices. I make non-traditional Portuguese Azulejo tiles with wood, ballpoint pen, tempera, beads, neon colors and pattern; I create time-based performative video work to explore Catholic rituals; and I use reflective materials, rosary beads, and objects to explore sculptural abstractions of tile and repetition. These materials grant me agency to participate in traditional Portuguese practices through acts of disidentification. They allow me to fold in joy, humor, and tension into my examination of cultural perception. Some see disruptions as interferences. I view them as a powerful reclamation of one’s sense of belonging and a reinvigoration of tradition.



The MFA Thesis Exhibition for the Class of 2026 incorporates a range of making practices spanning themes including the natural and built environments, the uncanny, the everyday, health, grief, and personal and cultural histories. With an emphasis on both the personal and the global, these nine artists make a variety of contributions through ceramics, drawings, photography, prints, sculptures, and sound and video installations. The nature of their work and research demonstrates the caliber and cultural relevance of MECA&D’s MFA Studio Art program.








Institute of Contemporary Art
at Maine College of Art & Design
522 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101

Gallery Hours:
Wed–Sun, 11:00am–5:00pm,
Thursday, 11:00am–7:00pm