Grazielle Bruscato Portella is a designer, visual artist, and researcher.
She holds a BA in Design from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil). She earned a Master’s degree in Intelligence Technologies and Digital Design from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUCSP). She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the Universidade de Lisboa (2024), with the dissertation Slow Drawing for a Contemplative Path, funded by FCT (Portugal), awarded Cum Laude and a European Doctorate.
Teaching
She is currently an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) at IE University (School of Architecture and Design, Madrid/Segovia), where she teaches courses in design projects, design methodology, research techniques, and digital tools.
Since 2022 she has been an adjunct professor at Eina, teaching project courses (I, IV, V, and VI).
In 2022 she was a visiting researcher at the Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB).
Research / Professional activity
Her interests lie in contemporary design and art practices that respond to social, technological, and ecological challenges. This includes post-representational and sensorial processes, affective atmospheres, critical and embodied pedagogies, cartography, degrowth studies, and performative and speculative practices. Her current research explores how a contemplative attitude can contribute to design and art practices, and to what extent this approach can foster more ethical creative processes in the context of acceleration and hyper-digitalization, building on her doctoral research where she developed the concept of slow drawing.
She also engages in research projects that intersect art and human geography to build a sense of place in peripheral city neighborhoods, using design ethnography and participatory research methodologies. She was curator and researcher in the project 5 Minutes of Drawing (Univ. of Lisbon, 2020–2022). Her methods are both experimental and qualitative.
As a design professional, she has worked at companies such as Google (São Paulo), Roche (Barcelona), and start-ups in Paris and Lisbon, with experience in experience design, interaction, and digital production. As an artist, she has participated in international residencies (L’AiR Arts, Paris; Joya:AiR, Almería) and exhibited in Lisbon, Barcelona, and Paris.
Recent publications
Bruscato Portella, G. (2024). La naturaleza camina: Cartografías especulativas e inteligencia artificial para diseñar futuros experienciales. Revista 180, (54)
Bruscato Portella, G. (2024). Walking memories, future dreams: Exploring design through cartographies, speculation, and AI. Possibility Studies & Society, 3(2)
Hildebrand, H. R., & Bruscato Portella, G. (2024). Interfaces Tangíveis e a Inteligência Artificial: Explorando a Interação Humano-Máquina. Mídia E Cotidiano, 18(2), 167-188.
Bruscato Portella, G. (2023). A poética da água: O desenho como metáfora de movimento do mar à mão. CONVOCARTE — Revista de Ciências da Arte, 15(dec. 2023): Art and mobility. Universidade De Lisboa, Faculdade De Belas-Artes, Centro De Investigação e Estudos Em Belas-Artes, 139-154.
Bruscato Portella, G. (2021). Desenho Contemporâneo e Filosofia Antiga: A criação artística como prática de «cuidado de si». Thomas Project, a border journal for utopian thoughts, 5(1).
Bruscato Portella, G. (2022). Conversando com Sam Winston: O desenho como linguagem na ausência de luz. Queiroz, João (Coord.), As Artes Visuais pelos Artistas: Atas do XIII Congresso CSO 2022, 473-486.
Bruscato Portella, G.; Passarinho, H.; Linhares, M. (2021). 5 Minutes of Drawing: Instagram for Scientific, Pedagogical and Artistic Communications in the Covid-19 Era. XXV International Conference of the Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics. Blucher. 365-376.