ISABEL LIMA
ABOUT
Isabel Lima is an artist / researcher based in the UK whose practice addresses the overarching themes of Identity, Culture and Place. Her own family history of displacement is the catalyst for her research interests. Lima develops artist-led projects in collaboration with groups of people who have systematically suffered injustice and/or oppression caused by capitalism and colonialism.
In her practice Lima articulates Socially Engaged Art with the Epistemologies of the South through the making of longitudinal art projects in collaboration with neighbourhoods. From the standpoint of a migrant, woman, artist based in the UK, Lima’s work posits forms of enacting citizenship and claiming rights alongside others. The artworks are modes of convening collaborative forms of assembly, working, and living in solidarity. Using a decolonial lens to conduct, examine and reflect upon projects, allows Lima to unpack how to delink her artistic practice from paternalist and extractivist endeavours. Her work is (un)disciplinary aiming to dissolve fragmentation in order to pursue intersectional community-led wishes and objectives.
© Tim Butcher
"I CLEARLY LACK A SHARED HISTORY, A VERNACULAR, ALL OF THE LEARNED MOTILITIES AND EMBODIMENTS, A DEEP SENSE OF THE SPACE AND ITS PRODUCTION. THUS, AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THE INSERTION LIES IN RECOGNISING MY LACKS THAT INVOLVE A CLARITY ABOUT ENTERING WORLDS OF SENSE IN WHICH I LACK FLUENCY. INSERTION IS THEN A LEARNING AND A CLARITY ABOUT MY SHORTCOMINGS AND ABOUT WHAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, INSERTION ALSO INCLUDES THE DIFFICULT, CONTINUING, AND OFTEN PAINFUL TASK OF UNDERSTANDING MYSELF AS I AM PERCEIVED IN THE WORLDS OF SENSE THAT I AM ENTERING AND INHABITING. THE INSERTION REREADS ME, RECONSTRUCTS ME, WHATEVER MY DESIRES OR INTENTIONS."
Maria Lugones (2003)
PRACTICE
GENESIS
UNTITLED, 2009
This work documents the artist’s parents recollections of their journey from Angola to Portugal in 1975, when escaping the Angolan Independence War. Interviewed separately each individual’s memory becomes a personal archive of family’s history, trauma, knowledges, and political (colonial) landscapes. At a time when Portuguese Colonial Histories weren’t being addressed or even acknowledged, this work reckoned with it in a public format.
This work became the catalyst for the artist’s research interests.
CONTACT
isabellima.projects@gmail.com