A Mini Biography

Maria Imaculada Madeira

Maria Madeira was born in 1969, in the village of Gleno in the Ermera region of East Timor. She was evacuated from Timor by the Portuguese Air Force in 1976 during the Indonesian invasion. She spent most of the subsequent eight years in the griding poverty of an International Red Cross refugee camp on the outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal. She immigrated to Australia with her family in August 1983, settling in Middle Swan on Perth's Eastern fringes,

Adjusting to an Australian high school was a huge transition, and Maria and her five siblings were required to repeat a numbers of years of schooling. Maria has gone on to complete three University qualifications: a B.A. Fine Arts (Visual Arts) Degree from Curtin University in 1991, a Graduate Diploma of Education (Major in Art) from Curtin University in 1993, and a B.A. in Political Science from Murdoch University in 1996.

Between 1996 and 2000, Maria worked in Western Australia as a high school art teacher and for several arts and culture organisations. Maria was an art teacher at Merredin Senior High School, Kambalda High School, and West Coast College of TAFE. O behalf of WA Ministry for Culture and the Arts, she conducted visual arts workshops with art teachers. She was an artist in residence and cultural adviser with Lockridge Primary School and the Deckchair Theatre. She has also been an Agency Coordinator for Kulcha (Multicultural Arts WA), coordinating and liaising between the artists and clients for festivals and multicultural events.

Maria returned to East Timor to live between 2000 - 2004 to play a part East Timor's recovery, rebuilding and development of the world's newest nations. Being fluent in English, Tetum, and Portuguese proved useful. She was employed in 2001 and 2002 as interpreter and translator for the AUSAID-sponsored 'Alliance Planning and Consultancy (APAC) Health Systems' project to procure and distribute ambulances throughout East Timor. She assisted in the translation of Government health policies for ambulance system in East Timor, and with the collection of standardised data for each district health facility. She also designed the Ambulance Logo for the ambulance system in East Timor. In 2004 - 2005, Maria was employed as an interpreter, translator and cultural adviser by the United Nations' Serious Crimes Unit investigating Crimes Against Humanity committed in 1999 and 2000. While in Dili, Maria also worked voluntarily every Saturday as an art teacher at the Arte Moris art school, provided free to local youth.

To date, Maria has held over fifteen solo or group exhibitions of her paintings, sculptures, drawings, mixed media collages and installation pieces, across Australia, Portugal and East Timor. Her main concern as an artist, teacher and cultural adviser is to convey East Timor's culture and traditions to other societies - and vice-versa. It is her strong belief that art and culture are the spirit and soul of a nation. She regards art and culture as a vehicle through which future generations can learn to appreciate the beauty and strength of their own culture - and, in this way, discover who they are in the world.