THE FULFILLMENT OF A THREATENED LOVE DISCOURSE

Isabel Barahona (Cascais, 1974), visual artist, teacher, has a background in sculpture, painting, glass, and drawing (Ar.Co, 1993/96) and completed a postgraduate 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, as part of a postdoctoral program, she received a scholarship from the University of Rennes 2, where she conducted research on the origins of an online archive project on artist books and authorship in Portugal. She began her artistic journey in 2001 with a solo exhibition titled "mythologies," and since then, she has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Portugal and abroad. Notably, in 2018, she participated in the group exhibition titled "Ar" at the Municipal Museum of Faro. Vasco Vidigal commented on her work (Artadentro, Municipal Museum of Faro, 2009/2010), evoking the "memory of the process of creation" in relation to the series presented in 2003, "tu es mon pays", which transforms the pictorial surface into a "landscape marked and revealing of the action of time". This process later delves into the space of assumed intimacy, bringing together internal circumstances and external phenomena. (…) This kind of "introspective drift" leads her to use drawing as a "privileged form of investigation and inventory" of the feminine condition, always in relation to the lyrical coordinates of an intimate and wonderful 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 evocative of 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 "now here telling you wanting you us mouth," "tattoo me and sing with me," "now here," "telling you wanting you," "time us," convey the sense of a desired love dialogue that is constantly interrupted by all the external vicissitudes that threaten its fulfillment.

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