About Luísa
Luísa Pacheco is a visual artist, production designer, art director and scenographer with more than thirty years of experience across the fields of visual arts, film, theatre and museology. Following her studies in Theatre Design in London, she developed an international practice through collaborations with artists, filmmakers, cultural institutions and creative teams across Europe and beyond. She also holds the title of Specialist awarded by Universidade Lusófona, in recognition of her professional achievements and contribution to the creative industries.
Sophia Award 2026 – Best Costume Design
Winner of the 2026 Sophia Award for Best Costume Design for the feature film As Meninas Exemplares, directed by João Botelho.
The costume design work created for this feature film was recognised by the Portuguese Film Academy at the 2026 Sophia Awards, acknowledging excellence in cinematic costume design and artistic achievement.
Project: As Meninas Exemplares
Director: João Botelho
Production: Ar de Filmes
Alongside her professional career, she maintains a multidisciplinary artistic practice encompassing sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, jewellery and hybrid media. Her work explores themes of identity, memory, transformation, gender politics, ecology, survival, and the evolving relationships between nature, technology and contemporary society.
Through a conceptual and experimental approach, she creates works that inhabit the boundaries between the organic and the artificial, the human and the non-human, the natural and the technological. Her sculptures and installations investigate processes of adaptation, mutation and preservation, questioning systems of categorisation while reflecting on contemporary existence within a context shaped by technological acceleration, environmental change and the continuous redefinition of social and cultural structures.
In recent years, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and internationally, including galleries, museums and cultural institutions. Through these projects, she continues to investigate questions of memory, identity, transformation, ecology, survival and the impact of technological and social change on contemporary existence.
Throughout her career, she has worked as a production designer, art director, scenographer and costume designer on numerous film, television, advertising and theatre productions. In 2026, she was awarded the Sophia Award for Best Costume Design by the Portuguese Academy of Cinema.
She lives and works in Lisbon.
