CAM in Venice: The Soul Expanding Ocean, Diana Policarpo
Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) and TBA21-Academy present a solo exhibition of the artist Diana Policarpo (Lisbon, 1986) in Ocean Space, Venice – as part of a two-year curatorial cycle entitled The Soul Expanding Ocean, curated by Chus Martínez.
Held in the context of the Venice Biennale 2022, The Soul Expanding Ocean #4 is the artist’s largest installation to date – in which she explores multiple media, including audio and film, to create an immersive experience, a sense of being inside the ocean and thinking about it from within.
The starting point of the exhibition was a trip the artist made to the Ilhas Selvagens in the northern Atlantic Ocean, where she tracked the natural biodiversity and through which she mapped out colonial histories. In the installation, the artist presents a narrative where we can understand the role of science in colonial processes and how it is entangled in power relations.
If you are in Venice, be sure to visit the exhibition, which will be open from April 9 until October 2 this year.
BIOGRAPHY
Diana Policarpo (lives and works between Lisbon and London) is a Portuguese visual artist and free composer whose work consists of both visual and musical media, including drawing, score, sculpture, large-scale performance and multi-channel sound installation. She graduated from Goldsmiths College with a MFA in Fine Art in 2013.
Her work investigates power relations, popular culture and gender politics, juxtaposing the rhythmic structuring of sound as a tactile material within the social construction of esoteric ideology. She creates performances and installations to examine experiences of vulnerability and empowerment associated with acts of exposing oneself to the capitalist world.
TBA21–Academy is a contemporary art organisation and cultural ecosystem fostering a deeper relationship to the Ocean through the lens of art to inspire care and action.
For a decade, they have been an incubator for collaborative research, artistic production and new forms of knowledge by combining art and science, resulting in exhibitions, research and policy interventions. In 2019, the Academy has launched two initiatives to share its research and practice with the wider public: the physical venue Ocean Space in Venice, and the digital platform Ocean Archive.