The Totems Familia — a sculptural work created to invite touch, interaction, and sensory connection across all abilities.
ABOUT
Marta Figueiredo is an Australian-Portuguese multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice spans experimental design, sculpture, installation, public art, and performance - exploring how materials, objects, and spacial experiences can express stories of care, resilience, and the body. These investigations are grounded in chronic illness, feminist thought, and engagement with ecology and place.
She embraces a discursive approach to design, using form and spatial interaction as tools for reflection, critique, and dialogue. Drawing from personal and collective experience, she brings feminist and disability-led perspectives to question normative ideas of productivity, functionality, and the “average user.” Through colour, texture, scent, sound, and form, she creates playful, multisensory works that invite emotional and embodied engagement. Marta is increasingly exploring participatory methods - gathering impressions and responses from others to inform her process and surface overlooked narratives and alternative ways of knowing.
Her work is informed by a background in architecture, shaped through past registration and practice in Portugal and the UK, though she does not provide architectural services in Victoria /Australia.
In 2024, Marta was awarded the Australian Furniture Design Award for Chronicles of Resilience, a sculptural cabinet honouring the lived experiences of people with endometriosis. She was also invited to speak at Design Tasmania’s Agents of Change: Women in Design colloquium where she shared her approach to inclusive design and feminist storytelling through her practice. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Melbourne Now at the NGV, Sydney Contemporary, Milan Design Week, Collectible Brussels, and Métaphores – Hermès Paris.
She is currently working on ongoing research-led collaboration with human geographer Dr. Elisabetta Crovara, exploring how design can translate the lived experience of chronic illness into poetic, spatial, and material storytelling.