The Soul Expanding Ocean #4: Diana Policarpo

Ciguatera

April 9 – October 2, 2022

Ocean Space Venice

Exhibition view “The Soul Expanding Ocean #4: Diana Policarpo. Ciguatera”, Ocean Space, Venice, 2022. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Co-produced by TBA21–Academy and Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, in collaboration with Instituto Gulbenkian Ciência. Photo: Matteo De Fina

The Soul Expanding Ocean #4: Diana Policarpo. Graphic design by Studio Ana Domínguez.

Exhibition view “The Soul Expanding Ocean #4: Diana Policarpo. Ciguatera”, Ocean Space, Venice, 2022. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Co-produced by TBA21–Academy and Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, in collaboration with Instituto Gulbenkian Ciência. Photo: Matteo De Fina

Photo: Diana Policarpo: Image from a research trip to the Portuguese Savage Islands. Courtesy of the artist.

TBA21–Academy

Commissions

Ocean Space Venice

TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM) and Instituto Gulbenkian Cieência, present a solo exhibition dedicated to the artist Diana Policarpo at Ocean Space. The exhibition is part of a two-year curatorial cycle entitled The Soul Expanding Ocean by Ocean Space’s 2021 and 2022 curator Chus Martínez.

For her newly commissioned work at Ocean Space, Diana Policarpo is developing a multimedia installation, using film and audio to enhance a certain sense of presence while capturing her own research process. Taking her point of departure from a research trip to the Portuguese administered Ilhas Selvagens (Savage Islands) in the North Atlantic Ocean, Policarpo creates a case study of mapping colonial histories through tracking natural biodiversity. 

With their technological lenses, cameras can see layers of life activity that human eyes cannot. Embedded in the very substance of the installations, these films become another sculptural material and, as such, they have the same function: to create a dramaturgy where we understand that science is implicated in colonial processes and entangled in power relations. While microorganisms have formed part of myths since ancient times and storytelling has a filmic quality, one could say that in both installations the camera is closer to a mouth that tells than to an eye that records.

This new work marks a jump in scale and ambition to constitute Policarpo’s biggest sculptural installation to date, giving the artist an opportunity to unfold her artistic vocabulary in full. In her treatment of sculpture, transparency, and fluidity play a key political and aesthetic role. She wants our bodily experiences being affected and transformed; these experiences becoming a liquid substance similar to water and able to respond to the settings created by the artist. The materiality of the artworks contributes to a feeling of being inside the Ocean and thinking from within. 

'Our eyes become lenses, we see like a microscope, we see like a camera recording the depths of the seas, we see like a drone. Diana Policarpo plays with our physical presence in space to render visible the many ways the Ocean makes sense to life. The installation is an island, a wild island, untouched by humans.' - Chus Martínez

The Soul Expanding Ocean #4: Diana Policarpo
Ciguatera
Curated by Chus Martínez
April 9 - October 2, 2022
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy and co-produced by Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, in collaboration with Instituto Gulbenkian Ciência. With the support of Camões and the Embassy of Portugal in Rome.

FULL CURATORIAL TEXT

CURATOR

Chus Martínez is head of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, and in 2021-22, the Curator of Ocean Space, Venice, TBA21–Academy’s center for catalyzing ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts. Previously, she led The Current II (2018–20), a project initiated by TBA21–Academy. The Current is the inspiration behind Art is Ocean, a series of seminars and conferences held at the Art Institute which examines the role of artists in the conception of a new experience of nature.
 

LOCATION

Ocean Space
Chiesa di San Lorenzo
Castello  5069
30122 Venezia
 

DIANA POLICARPO

Diana Policarpo is a visual artist and composer working in visual and musical media including drawing, video, sculpture, text, performance, and multi-channel sound installation. Policarpo investigates gender politics, economic structures, health, and interspecies relations through speculative transdisciplinary research. She creates installations to examine experiences of vulnerability and empowerment associated with acts of exposing oneself to the capitalist world.

Her work has been exhibited worldwide including recent solo presentations at Kunsthall Trondheim (NO), Galeria Municipal do Porto (PT), Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology - MAAT (PT), Kunstverein Leipzig (DE), Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (DE), among others. Policarpo has recently exhibited, performed and screened her work at Kunsthall Oslo, W139, Amsterdam; Mars Gallery, Melbourne; Peninsula Gallery; New York; and Whitechapel Gallery, LUX- Moving Image, Cafe OTO and Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Policarpo was the winner of Prémio Novos Artistas Fundação EDP 2019 and the illy Present Future Prize 2021.
 

PRESS AREA

Click here
 

RELATED PROGRAM

Cerith Wyn Evans
Katagami Screen 5, 2015

The Soul Expanding Ocean #1: Taloi Havini Answer to the Call

Artists

Diana Policarpo