Lenka Della-Porta
(b.2000) Lives and works in London, UK
Lenka Della-Porta (b.2000) is a Japanese British visual artist living in London. With a background in illustration, she graduated from University of the Arts London in 2023 with a First Class Honours. Informed by memory and preservation, her practice navigates the boundaries between lived experience and identity. Her work, delicately drawn out in graphite and charcoal, dissects the fragile nature of positionality, morality, and secrecy.
Lenka’s practice holds a distinct interest in the objects and patterns that make up the world, carrying on from her graduate study looking at cultural nostalgia and diasporic identities in relation to the modern globalised world.
Since the beginning of 2026 she has expanded her creative exploration into curation, including the group exhibitions ‘Points of Interest’ at the Chapel in St. Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green, and ‘I’m Not Here For You’ at Roha Gallery in Hackney Wick. Lenka has exhibited in group shows including ‘HER’ at Camden Open Air Gallery, ‘Racecar’ at Safehouse 1 & 2, and ‘A line has time in it’ with Carta Magna in Fitzrovia. Lenka currently is working at the intersection of illustration and fine art, having since worked on personal and commercial projects with ESEA collective BAESIANZ, author Ashley Hickson-Lovence and artist Cavetown. Her presence in London’s upcoming creative scene has landed her in publications such as Aether Magazine, TANK Magazine and EE72.
Selected Works
Face to Face, 2026
Game On, 2025
Someone Somewhere, 2025
Intertwined, Indefinitely, 2026
Work Available
Arthoods Review
There is something deeply cinematic within Lenka Della Porta’s practice, as though each drawing exists like a fading fragment of memory or an unfinished dream. Working primarily with charcoal and graphite, the artist creates delicate yet emotionally charged scenes that drift quietly between reality and imagination.What particularly resonated with Arthoods was the artist’s use of graphite and charcoal, materials many people first encountered during childhood through simple pencils, sketching, and erasing marks on paper. In contemporary art, it has become increasingly rare to see these materials remain at the centre of an artist’s visual language, which gives the works an immediate sense of familiarity and emotional closeness.
Through blurred charcoal traces and fine graphite lines, figures and gestures emerge with remarkable sensitivity. The characters seem to exist in almost zero distance from the viewer, where eye contact, posture, and subtle body language create a quiet psychological tension between intimacy and distance. Arthoods invites viewers to slow down and spend time with the works. Returning to the same image at different moments may reveal entirely different emotions each time, a subtle connection that feels almost like a chemistry between the viewer and the work itself.
Artist Statement
Primarily using charcoal and graphite, Lenka’s work is loosely drawn out as self portraits, treading the line between dream and reality. Picking at these threads, she draws out characters and objects in surreal scenarios, pieced together and held still in suspense. She visualises memories, whether vibrant in her mind or almost fading, as still snapshots of a certain period in life. Etched with fine lines of graphite amongst the blurred smudges and streaks of charcoal, these images challenge the accuracy of nostalgia and the deception of her visual language.
Lenka’s work embodies the reconstruction of unstable memory and imagination, often coming to surface through the mundane and beautiful: Wings, ribbon, shadows, hunched bodies, outstretched hands, and ambiguous eye contact. Mourning in future tense, her work gives space to moments of heightened emotion, preserving these observations as melancholy romanticisation - otherwise moments that are lost to the passing of time. Lenka’s work is littered with motifs and symbols that visualise the juxtaposition in her experiences as a woman navigating femininity, as an identical twin, and as an individual split between two cultures. Playing on this duality, her worlds challenge the ongoing differences and similarities in her experiences; Childhood and adulthood, belonging and displacement, truth and secrecy.
Selected Exhibitions
2026 Unfinished Business, Group exhibition, The Good Rice Gallery, London
2025 A Line Has Time In It, Group exhibition, presented by Carta Magna, curated by Vittoria Beltrame, Fitzrovia, London
2025 Madeline, Presented by Qloud Collective, Noho Showrooms, Soho, London
2025 Fatigue/Vitality, Group exhibition presented by Ticket Inspector Collective, Piehouse Co-Op, Deptford, London
2025 Racecar, Group exhibition curated by Connie Ashford and Katya Hudson, Safehouse 1 & 2, Peckham, London
2025 Auto Amor Project Vol.2, Group exhibition presented by Auto Amor, The Art House, Haggerston, London
2025 HER, Group exhibition, Camden Open Air Gallery, Camden, London
2025 Curated Collective 1.0, Group exhibition curated by Laurie Bertram, Bread & Butter Lounge, Shoreditch, London (2025)
2025 Endless, Group exhibition presented by TRIBE, Oxford House, Bethnal Green, London (2025)
2024 Lenka Della-Porta, Solo exhibition, Avalon Cafe, Deptford, London (2024)
2024 Shapes and Things, Group exhibition presented by Shapes and Things, Projection Room, Soho, London (2024)
2023 Full Circle: 153°, Group exhibition, Camberwell College of Arts, Camberwell, London (2023)
2022 Graduate Showcase, Group exhibition, Creative Computing Institute, Camberwell, London (2022)
2020 Lunar New Year, Group exhibition, Camberwell College of Arts, Camberwell, London (2020)
2019 Hastings Rising Talent, Group exhibition, Hastings Forum, Hastings (2019)