Isabel Cordovil
Isabel Cordovil
The work of Isabel Cordovil (b.1994 Lisbon, Portugal) investigates the politics of revisiting narratives - be it in myth, folk, religion, literature, dreams or around the collective unconscious - and new possible navigations or manipulations of it. Accepting language and symbols as the process of meaning-construction, the artist works towards a broadening of their spectrums of agency. Despite its physical absence, the body, in the practice of Isabel Cordovil, operates as a principal subject, as a mediator between the self and the external world, a measuring device, set out to explore themes tied to (gender) identity, the self, sites of political discourse, finitude and death. Mainly through installation and sculpture, the artist’s work reflects a poetic language of playful metaphor, a freedom and visual disobedience while searching for new ways of belonging/ defying and celebrating otherness.
Isabel Cordovil has completed her studies at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts, London and HEAD Geneva University of Art and Design, Geneva, Switzerland. Exhibitions of her work include Culturgest, Porto, Portugal; MACE, Elvas, Portugal; Lievre, Basel, Switzerland, and Appleton Box, Lisbon. Her films have been screened at Doclisboa and Queer Lisboa and are included in the Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado, Lisbon; Coleção António Cachola, Elvas; Coleção Norlinda e José Lima, S. João da Madeira, Portugal and Coleção Santander Artistas Emergentes, Lisbon. In 2024, Isabel Cordovil will participate in a residency at Residency Unlimited, New York.