The work of Isabel Cordovil (Portugal, 1994) deals with a fusion of narrative archaeology and symbolic reinvention. Her field of action spans installation and sculpture—often marked by a theatrical sensibility and a deep engagement with the materials, forms, and rituals of iconographic tradition—to reimagine and re-navigate myths, folklore, religious imagery, literature, dreamscapes, and the collective unconscious. Cordovil treats language and symbols as mutable instruments of meaning-making, embracing misinterpretation, manipulation, and playful distortion as strategies to expand their agency.

Cordovil’s practice inhabits a space where stories stripped of ownership by the passage of time can be re-entered, recast, and re-released into dialogue. Although the human body is frequently absent in physical form, it operates as a central subject: a measuring device mediating between the self and the external world, a point of encounter for themes of (gender) identity, political discourse, finitude, and mortality. Her works invite viewers into environments that oscillate between belonging and estrangement, reverence and irreverence—spaces where poetic metaphor and visual disobedience celebrate otherness while defying fixed cultural readings.Isabel Cordovil has completed her studies at HEAD Geneva University of Art and Design, Geneva, Switzerland, Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa and Central Saint Martins, University of Arts, London. Cordovil’s work in included in Coleção de Arte Contemporânea Culturgest, Coleção do Estado, Portugal; Coleção António Cachola; Coleção Armando Martins, amongst others.

isabelhcordovil@gmail.com
@isabel.cordovil