Tiago Rodrigues (b. 1988, Cape Town, RSA) is an artist whose practice is situated within a sustained investigation of materiality, spatial relations, and the socio-political conditions that shape contemporary life. Born in South Africa and raised between South Africa and Portugal, Rodrigues’ work reflects a transnational sensibility informed by both local and European cultural frameworks. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a major in Sculpture at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2016.

Working primarily as a sculptor with industrial and structural materials including steel, timber, and cast iron, Rodrigues approaches sculpture as a site of material and conceptual negotiation. His practice foregrounds process and experimentation, emphasising the inherent tensions between rigidity and vulnerability, permanence and instability. Through restrained formal strategies, his sculptures activate space and invite a heightened awareness of the viewer’s physical and psychological engagement with the work.

Conceptually, Rodrigues’ practice engages critically with systems of power, social disruption, and the human condition within late-capitalist society. His work draws on ideas associated with anarchism, decentralisation, and acts of transgression, examining how imposed values and social structures produce instability and disillusionment. While earlier works incorporated references to Catholicism and Portuguese cultural history, his recent practice privileges material and aesthetic inquiry, allowing meaning to emerge through form, structure, and spatial encounter rather than explicit narrative.

Occupying a position between abstraction and referentiality, Rodrigues’ sculptures resist singular interpretation and instead propose open-ended readings grounded in tactile experience. The works often suggest states of tension, suspension, or impending collapse, underscoring the precariousness of social and material systems. Through this approach, Rodrigues situates sculpture as both an object and a critical proposition, attentive to the ways in which form can register broader conditions of uncertainty and transformation.

Rodrigues lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.