Reimagining the Algarve: Bringing its stories to life through hand-painted façades
– September 9, 2025 | Text Beatriz Maio
For as long as she can remember, Inna Iefimenko has loved drawing and has excelled in the artistic world. She began at the age of three and, by six, had her first exhibition in her hometown of Zhytomyr, in northern Ukraine.
At that age, she enrolled in a Fine Arts school and, throughout her childhood, was featured several times in Ukrainian newspapers.
At 14 years old, she moved with her family to Kyiv, where she continued her studies at a school specialising in Fine Arts, focusing on the field of Architecture. Later, she graduated in Urban Architecture and Fine Arts from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv and, upon graduation, worked as an architect also in the Ukrainian capital.
Even though Inna and her family didn’t speak English or Portuguese, they left their home country and their small wooden furniture factory in 2010 and moved to Carregado, in Lisbon’s Vila Franca de Xira municipality.
In 2011, they chose the Algarve to open a restaurant overlooking the sea. Despite having no experience in the restaurant business, they inaugurated Waterfront in Portimão Marina, where Inna worked as a manager and waitress.
She always dreamed of being an artist, but painting tiles was an idea that had never occurred to her.
It came to her in 2019 when her partner, Fernando, who works in house renovation, suggested that she could do it instead of ordering hand-painted tiles. What began as a challenge is now a passion, inspired by the tiles on the façades they came across on walks through Lisbon, Porto, Ericeira, and the Portuguese Tile Museum.
Now, the couple’s joint project is redrawing Portimão and making it more beautiful, fuelled by Inna’s love for the city that she has made her home, and a country she is passionate about, from the people, nature, and climate to the language and popular music.
The artist started her first experiments with tiles using a friend’s pottery kiln, and she hasn’t stopped since.
She has painted building façades that do not go unnoticed and fulfil her goal of “telling local or national stories and convey peace and good vibes”. Together with Fernando, she decided to renovate façades with hand-painted tiles and created the Vida à Portuguesa (The Portuguese Life) project, which covers several Local Accommodation units (AL) and a mechanical workshop.
“As an architect and artist, I see tiles as a perfect material.
They’re traditional and have enormous artistic potential. They can be used to improve urban architecture, tell stories, and enhance public spaces,” stresses Inna.
Her pieces captivate with their colour and shine, which do not fade over time, thanks to her careful production process. She first buys raw tiles with glass powder directly from a Portuguese factory in Lisbon, designs them with high-temperature paints, and bakes them in a special oven at 1015°C, ensuring their high quality and durability.
Inna painted her first house, located on Rua da Barca in Portimão, in 2020, depicting the history of sardine fishing.
A year later, in the same city, her second work was created on Rua do Colégio, under the theme “Fruits of the land and fruits of the sea”, featuring seafood, fish, and fruits from the Algarve.
In 2022, Inna spread her talent to a special place: her partner’s mechanical workshop on Rua dos Operários Conserveiros, with a panel that shows the story of classic cars, highlighting 13 Portuguese car brands manufactured in Portugal, as well as Portimão’s past.
The following year, the couple began renovating a building near the TEMPO Theatre on Rua Doutor Vitorino Mealha, which will feature tiles around the entrance depicting Algarve fruits, such as oranges, lemons, pomegranates, figs, and, of course, almonds. However, they are still awaiting a licence from Portimão Council to complete the project.
For yet another project, Inna and Fernando combined their passion for art and Portuguese history and culture with their love of animals, resulting in Casa do Gato, on Rua do Carvalho, a beautiful tribute to the region’s nature, depicting flowers, fruit, butterflies, and cats.
The project also holds a special memory for the couple – they first met at Portimão Marina in 2012, when Fernando, originally from Alenquer, in Lisbon, was on holiday and visited Inna’s family restaurant with a cat, which sparked a conversation between the two.
Together for over 10 years, the couple lived in France for a while, eventually returning to the Algarve, where they give free rein to their imagination and find happiness.
Inna’s works are inspired by everything around her, such as nature, history, culture, people, and animals. She mainly uses shades of blue, as it’s a traditional colour that goes well with the greens and yellows often found in Algarve streets, and sometimes adds touches of red.
With no shortage of ideas and an unstoppable desire to create, the artist has also completed several commissioned works for hotels such as Bricia Du Mar, in Ferragudo, restaurants like AllGarbe, in Portimão, private homes, and even for a veterinary clinic in Ayamonte, Spain, “all with designs that tell local or family stories, as well as commercial projects stories”.
Inna believes that it’s possible to transform a city through art, and “that’s precisely what the façade of a building can and should do”.
Although she admits that seeing her work displayed in the open air is rewarding, her greatest pleasure is the joy it brings to people.
“I receive many thanks from locals and tourists. It’s simply wonderful,” she reveals. With the ambition of helping to transform Portimão into a historic, cultural, creative, and clean place, full of flowers, Inna and Fernando are developing a public project where they plan to tell more stories about the city with hand-painted tile panels.
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