Miguel Januário was born in Porto in 1981.
In 1999 he entered the Fine Arts College at the University of Porto, in the Communication Design course and from that year he began to develop interventions of graffiti in the urban space and, in parallel, commissioned works. He established himself as a freelancer integrating the cultural space ‘Maus Hábitos’, in Porto, where he created a studio and developed many of his projects. In 2005, in an academic scope, he created an intervention project called ‘±MAISMENOS±’, which became a reference in the national and international street art panorama. In 2009 moves to Lisbon and continues to develop his project and other artistic projects. From 2011 to 2013 was artistic director at Ivity Brand Corp. Established in Porto since 2014, dedicates himself almost exclusively to ‘±’, taking the project to other countries, while making a standpoint in the Portuguese and international art scene. The project is also the focus of Miguel Januário’s ongoing PhD research at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto.
Under the ±MaisMenos± banner, he has been producing thought-provoking, cutting-edge work both indoors and outdoors in a variety of media – from video to sculptural installations, from painting to performance. Besides numerous illegal public art interventions in several countries, the project has also been showcased in solo and group exhibitions in various institutional contexts, including at Vera Cortês Gallery (Lisbon, 2010), MACE–Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas (Elvas, 2011, 2014), Underdogs Gallery (Lisbon, 2013, 2014, 2015), Caixa Cultural (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasilia, 2014), Museu do Côa (Vila Nova de Foz Côa, 2015), Centro de Arte Contemporânea Graça Morais (Bragança, 2015), MUDE–Museu do Design e da Moda (Lisbon, 2016), MACRO–Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Rome, 2016), Wunderkammern Gallery (Rome, 2017), Celaya Brothers Gallery (México City, 2018), Arco Lisboa (Lisbon, 2018), WTF Gallery (Bangkok, 2018) and leading art festivals and events such as Walk&Talk Festival (São Miguel, Azores, 2011), Guimarães European Capital of Culture (Guimarães, 2012), La Tour Paris 13 (Paris, 2013), Wool Festival (2014), Nuart Festival (Stavanger, 2014, 2017), TrashPlant Festival (Tenerife, 2018), Roskilde Festival (Roskilde, 2018) and Forgotten Project (Rome, 2016). ±MaisMenos± has also been the subject of two TED talks, at TEDxLuanda (Luanda, 2014) and TEDxPorto (Porto, 2015), and other public and academic lectures.