Inside the Studio: A Visit with Ana Malta at Underdogs, Lisbon

We spent an afternoon with artist Ana Malta at Underdogs gallery in Lisbon, stepping inside her temporary studio, witnessing her process, and becoming, in a small way, part of the work itself.

There are visits, and then there are the kind that stay with you. Our recent afternoon at Underdogs gallery in Lisbon was firmly the latter.

Ana Malta has been invited by Underdogs to take over the gallery space entirely — not to show work, but to make it. For one month, the gallery becomes her studio, a living workspace where she develops pieces that will then form the foundation of a solo exhibition opening on 9 October. It is a bold and generous proposition from the gallery: to open the door before the work is finished, and to invite an audience in while everything is still in motion.

When our collectors arrived, Ana was already at work. The space felt alive with process — the particular quality of a place where something is being made, not simply displayed. Ana welcomed us with real openness, walking us through the thinking behind the pieces she had already begun and explaining the wider territory her practice moves through. Her work grows from stories and objects: things overheard, things stumbled upon, things pressed into her hands by strangers and friends. Material and narrative are inseparable for her.

In the spirit of that practice, she asked something of each of us. Before the visit, members were invited to bring an object or a story — something personal, something real — to share with her. That exchange became the heart of the afternoon. Collectors offered up fragments of their own lives, and Ana received them with the attentiveness of someone who genuinely listens. Those stories, those objects, may yet find their way into the work hanging on the walls in October.

What made the visit so unusual was exactly that quality of mutual generosity. Ana gave us access not just to the finished thinking but to the unfinished, uncertain, searching part of the process — the part artists rarely show. And in return, we offered her something of ourselves. It created a sense of connection that is difficult to manufacture and impossible to replicate in a conventional gallery setting.

This is the kind of access that 100 Collectors is built around: not a preview, not a tour, but a genuine encounter with an artist in the middle of their work. Intimate, unrepeatable, and rooted in real exchange.

The exhibition at Underdogs opens on 9 October. For members who attended the residency visit, seeing the finished show will carry an extra layer of meaning — you were there when it was still becoming.

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