Joana Escoval

Joana Escoval (1982, Lisbon) studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon and at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. After living in Madeira, Florence, New York and Berlin, she currently lives and works in Lisbon. Her work is mainly composed of delicate sculptural pieces, often combining materials and objects of various origins: metals such as gold or brass, which she manipulates in fine, curved, organic lines and, on the other hand, stones, volcanic rocks, feathers, sticks or other natural elements that she collects and uses in their raw state. In addition to sculptures, she also makes sound works, installations, video, and photography, in an artistic gesture that is both intuitive and rigorous, in which she explores a critical and sensitive suppression of the boundaries between the "natural" and the "cultural", the human and the non-human, highlighting the inexorable interconnection between all things. With minimal aesthetics, her pieces celebrate the transitory, the uninterrupted cycle of transformation and the poetic character of matter. 

Her first solo exhibition, entitled Onde no mundo inteiro, was held in 2010 at Tapada das Necessidades in Lisbon. Since then she has exhibited extensively and has been part of group exhibitions such as O sol morre cedo, Pavilhão Branco, Lisbon, 2009; Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, 2014; Le Lynx ne connaît pas de frontiéres, Foundation d'Entreprise Ricard, Paris, 2015; Transmissions from the Etherspace, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2017; Plant Revolution!, CIAJG, Guimarães, 2019.

Individually she held the exhibitions Outlaws in Language and Destiny, Parkour, Lisbon, 2013; Whirlpools, Vera Cortês Art Agency, Lisbon, 2014; Lichens Never Lie, La Criée Centre d'Art Contemporain, Rennes, 2016; I forgot to go to school yesterday, Kunsthalle Lissabon and Kunsthalle Tropical, Iceland, 2016; In a Waiting Room, Fiorucci Art Trust, London, 2019; and Mutations. The Last Poet at the Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, 2020.

She received the BES Revelation Award in 2012 (Serralves Museum) and was nominated for the EDP Foundation New Artists Award in 2015. She was granted scholarships by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation in 2013. She has participated in several artist residencies, such as Halfhouse, Barcelona, 2011, Residency Unlimited, New York, 2013-14, and Fiorucci Art Trust Residency, Stromboli, 2015.

CB, outubro 2020