Escoval’s entire oeuvre is permeated by a meticulous exploration of the impermanence, interconnections, and synergies that take shape in a body of work reduced to essential components. Transient and finely balanced, her sculptures invite us to walk along the edges of human consciousness, enabling a perception of our environment that is more sensed and experienced than looked at. Her sculptures of earthenware and metal and her installations with moss, feathers, stones, seashells and tropical leaves blur the boundary between culture and nature. Inspired by nature’s motifs, alchemy and cultures such as that of the American Navajo, her creations refer to ritual implements and transitional places. They have the momentum of conductors or a current of energy that interweave form and content, living and dead matter, the concrete and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible. In Escoval’s world nothing is decreed, everything is entwined and connected.
Gallery Exhibitions
Joana Escoval (1982, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon. Her practice circumscribes both visual and aural in the form of sculpture, collective walks, installations, and printed matter.
A selection of her solo exhibitions includes Wordless and Earthen, Bombon Projects, Barcelona 2022,WIND DREAMS, Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon 2022; I am Molten Matter, S.M.A.K. Museum, Ghent 2021; The Last Poet, Museum Colecção Berardo, Lisbon 2020; We do not work alone, Fiorucci Art Trust, London 2019; The sun lovers, Tenderpixel, London 2018); among others. She has taken part in group exhibitions at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover 2022; GAMeC Museum, Bergamo 2021; Pavilhão Branco, Lisboa 2021; 11a Biennal D’Art Leandre Cristòfol, Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida 2019; S.M.A.K., Ghent 2019, The sun lovers (solo show at Tenderpixel, London 2018); La Casa Encendida, Madrid 2017; Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli 2016; Kunsthalle Lissabon and Kunsthalle Tropical, Iceland 2016; among others.
Her work is in public and private collections such as Fiorucci Art Trust, UK, FRAC Lorraine, FR, Fundació Sorigué, ES, Fundación Kablanc Otazu, ES, S.M.A.K. Collection, BE, Portuguese State Collection, PT, Lisbon City Collection, PT, EDP Foundation, PT, Colecção António Cachola – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas Colecção, PT, Figueiredo Ribeiro – Quartel das Artes, PT.
Selected solo exhibitions
2023
2022
2019
2018
2017
2016
Selected group exhibitions
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019