Isabel Cordovil's work (1994) challenges visual conventions and proposes alternative forms of belonging, simultaneously questioning dominant discourses and reinterpreting narratives—from myth to literature, from religion to the collective unconscious—exploring how these can be revisited, manipulated, and transformed. Although not always physically represented, the body plays a central role in her practice, as a mediator between the interior and the exterior, as an instrument of measurement and as a starting point for thinking about themes related to identity or finitude.
The sculpture Ubi sunt, 2023, is the representation of an iron and bronze bed that materialises an absence. In Latin, “where are they?” is the expression used, especially in medieval literature and poetry, to reflect on the fleetingness and transience of life, evoking longing or contemplation of death. Presented slightly elevated from the ground, the sculpture bears the marks of a reclining body, evoking both its passing and its definitive absence. The work condenses a tension between vitality and finitude: the sheets, with marks of use, suggest the vigour of a struggling body, but also its withdrawal, the emptiness left by death or transformation, and the possibility of its resurrection. Cordovil inscribes his own body in this narrative, bringing the universal closer to the personal, collective memory and intimate experience. Ubi sunt thus materialises a poetics of physical absence: a place where the body, even when absent, is invoked and remains as a gravitational centre.

Carolina Quintela