Diana Policarpo
∗1986, Portugal
Diana Policarpo shifts between the visual arts and music, often weaving the two fields into immersive installations that investigate gender politics, economic structures, health and interspecies relationships. Her work is based on researching and exploring the histories and traditions of the place where she intervenes, collaborating with local scientists or artists. Through her works, she tries to break dualisms such as nature and culture, science and religious beliefs, while at the same time trying to hold back the impulse to categorise and colonise nature, as for example in Ciguatera: an installation presented by Ocean Space in Venice in 2022, arising from research into the biodiversity of the Ilhas Selvagens volcanic islands inthe North Atlantic Ocean. A translucent, alien and ethereal sculpture, reminiscent of a giant amoeba in transformation, emerges from an ancient fountain in the centre of the courtyard in Castel Gardena. The work, conceived by Policarpo forThe Parliament of Marmots, is inspired by the shape of a carnivorous sponge from the deep ocean, the Chondrocladia lampadiglobus, and is a tribute to the fluidity of the aguanes: female figures in Ladin mythology associated with bodies of water. Aguanes are metamorphic guardian entities of mountains, forests and waters, associated in some ways with mermaid figures. The work is complemented by an experimental multi-channel sound composition created in collaboration with the vocal research collective cobracoral that combines the nonverbal and the verbal, human and nonhuman sounds from animals and the landscape. Exploring local mythology, the artist weaves together feminism, interspecies relations, psychedelia and myth into an evocative and poetic installation.
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