Rosana Ricalde (b. 1971, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Brazilian contemporary artist whose practice is grounded in engraving and conceptual drawing, developed through her studies at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. This rigorous training established a foundation of precision and structural awareness that continues to inform her practice. She lives and works between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Coimbra, Portugal.Ricalde’s work is fundamentally centered on language as material. Drawing from literary, philosophical, and historical texts, she systematically deconstructs written content and reconstructs it into visual compositions. In this process, words are extracted from their narrative frameworks and reorganized into new spatial and formal arrangements, where meaning is no longer conveyed through readability but through density, rhythm, repetition, and structure. Language becomes image, and reading becomes a visual experience.This transformation of text into form positions her practice at the intersection of drawing, poetry, and conceptual art. Her works operate as visual systems in which language is both subject and structure, dissolving the boundary between writing and image-making. Through accumulation and fragmentation, she creates compositions where meaning emerges indirectly, through spatial relationships rather than linear narrative.Among her most significant bodies of work is the Invisible Cities series, inspired by Italo Calvino’s novel of the same name. In these works, Ricalde constructs imagined cartographies by extracting fragments of text and reorganizing them into visual fields that resemble maps, landscapes, and urban grids. Rather than illustrating Calvino’s cities, she translates them into linguistic architectures, where seas, territories, and imaginary geographies are formed entirely through written language.Across her practice, Ricalde maintains a sustained investigation into how language can function simultaneously as content and form, expanding the possibilities of visual art through systems of reading and perception. Her work has been widely exhibited across Brazil, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Mexico, and Argentina, and has been presented at Art Basel Miami Beach with Baró Galeria in 2011. Her work is held in major public and private collections, including the Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection at MAM Rio, the SESC National Collection, the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and the PLMJ Foundation in Lisbon. She is represented by Galerie Andres Thalmann in Zurich.