Isabel Barahona (Cascais, 1974), a visual artist and teacher, has a background in sculpture, painting, glass, and drawing (Ar.Co, 1993/96) and completed a Post-Graduate degree in Painting at FBAUL (2005/06). She studied painting in Brussels and holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In 2013, during a post-doctorate, she was a fellow at the University Rennes 2 where she conducted research on the origin of an online archive project about artist books and author editions in Portugal. She began her artistic journey in 2001 with a solo exhibition entitled "mythologies" and has since participated in various solo and group shows in Portugal and abroad, including the notable group exhibition "Ar" at the Municipal Museum of Faro in 2018. Vasco Vidigal, who commented on her work (Artadentro, Municipal Museum of Faro, 2009/2010), evokes the "memory of the process of making" in reference to the series presented in 2003, "tu es mon pays", which transforms the pictorial surface into a "landscape marked and revealing of the passage of time". This process deepens over time, converging an assumed intimacy with external circumstances and phenomena. This kind of "introspective drift" led her to use drawing as a privileged form of investigation and inventorying of the feminine condition. In a constant relationship between the lyrical coordinates of an intimate and marvelous world and an invasive and hostile reality. The four linoleum prints she currently presents, an interaction between subjective writings with a strong lyrical aspect and backgrounds that evoke fingerprints, reflect her previous concerns and artistic journey. The inscriptions of words on the skin, which seem to symbolize the subtle fabric of the soul, such as "agora aqui dizer-te tempo querer-te nós boca" (now here to tell you time to want you we mouth), "tatua-me e canta comigo" (tattoo me and sing with me), "agora aqui" (now here), "dizer-te querer-te" (to tell you to want you), "tempo nós" (time us), carry the meaning of a desired love dialogue that is always interrupted by all external vicissitudes that threaten its fullness.

Maria João Fernandes - International Association of Art Critics (AICA)