Hugo Canoilas

Hugo Canoilas (Lisbon, 1977) lives and works in Vienna. His recent solo presentations include CAV, Coimbra; the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Mumok, Vienna; and the Serralves Museum, Porto. He has participated in institutional exhibitions such as Manifesta 15, Barcelona; Kunstverein in Hamburg; De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; and the 30th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo.



In 2025, Canoilas presented "Hold Your Breath," a new opera made in collaboration with Éna Brennan and David Pountney, organized by Kunsthaus Bregenz and Bregenzer Festspielehaus. In 2020 he received the Kapsch-mumok Prize in Vienna and between 2018 and 2021, he organized the collective project "A Gruta" at Galeria Quadrado Azul in Lisbon. He initiated and co-edited the OEI Publication #80-81 "The Zero Alternative: Ernesto de Sousa: Portuguese Art and other aesthetic operators in Portuguese Art and Poetry from 1960's onwards." His work has been reviewed in The Guardian, Público, Expresso, and Der Standard, as well as in online and print magazines such as Mousse Magazine, Art Review, Artforum, Flash Art, Revista Contemporanea, and Umbigo, among others. Canoilas is also the author of numerous texts published in institutional catalogs and in printed and online magazines.