Isabel Barahona (Cascais, 1974) is a visual artist and teacher with a background in sculpture, painting, glass, and drawing (Ar.Co, 1993/96). She completed her postgraduate studies in Painting at FBAUL (2005/06) and studied painting in Brussels. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In 2013, during her postdoctoral studies, she received a scholarship from the University Rennes 2, where she conducted research on the origin of an online archive project about artist books and self-publishing in Portugal. She began her artistic career in 2001 with an individual exhibition titled "mythologies" and has since participated in numerous individual and collective exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, including the 2018 collective exhibition titled "Ar" at the Municipal Museum of Faro. Vasco Vidigal, who commented on her work (Artadentro, Municipal Museum of Faro, 2009/2010), evokes the memory of the artistic process in the series presented in 2003, "tu es mon pays." This process transforms the pictorial surface into a "marked and revealing landscape of the passage of time." Subsequently, her work delves into an assumed intimacy, merging external circumstances and phenomena. She embarks on an introspective journey using drawing as a privileged form of investigation and inventory of the female condition. This relationship is always portrayed between the lyrical coordinates of an intimate and marvelous world and an invasive and hostile reality. The four linocuts she currently presents are an interaction between subjective writings with a strong lyrical dimension and backgrounds evoking fingerprints. These works reflect her previous concerns and artistic journey. The inscriptions of words on the skin, which symbolize the delicate fabric of the soul, "agora aqui dizer-te tempo querer-te nós boca" (now here telling you wanting you us mouth), "tatua-me e canta comigo" (tattoo me and sing with me), "agora aqui" (now here), "dizer-te querer-te" (telling you wanting you), "tempo nós" (time us), express the desired loving dialogue that is constantly interrupted by external vicissitudes threatening its fullness.

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