Rafael de Oliveira a.k.a. Oxyretronave

Born in Angola in 1998, Rafael describes himself as an “afrofuturist, multidisciplinary visual artist of the diaspora,” expressing his “vision of the world through photography,” and using “image manipulation to create new visual perspectives and engage with humanity.” At the age of six, he picked up a camera and began to photograph anything that caught his attention. In 2016 he moved to motion pictures, and stepped from behind the lens to in front of it, as an actor in the short film “A Terceira Metade” (“The Third Half”), and for this work he received a nomination for Best Actor in Short Film - National Competition. He studied Cinema and Television at Lisbon’s Escola de Tecnologias, Inovação e Criação (ETIC) from 2018 to 2020, specialising in videoclips and documentary film. Most recently, he has exhibited as part of the projects “From A Distance Calling” (2021) and “Our (Spatial) Stories Live in Performative Futures” (2022) at HANGAR (Centro de Investigação Artistica), in Lisbon.

Rafael did Terrafoundation first artistic residency in November 2022. The results were presented at the exhibition The Day Opens My Eyes, in August 2023.