Diana Policarpo

Diana Policarpo was born in Lisbon in 1986 and lives and works between Lisbon and London. She is a visual artist and composer whose interdisciplinary practice moves across sound, sculpture, film, drawing, installation, electroacoustic music, and multimedia performance. She studied music at the National Conservatory of Lisbon, completed a BA in Fine Art at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design, and received an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2013. Policarpo’s practice investigates popular culture, health, gender politics, and interspecies relationships, frequently establishing connections between art and science. Her installations and performances explore the rhythmic structure of sound as a tactile material, while also examining the social construction of esoteric ideologies. Through the combination of visual and musical languages, she creates immersive environments in which sound becomes a physical and conceptual element of the work. Her work also considers questions of power, vulnerability, and empowerment, particularly in relation to the ways individuals and bodies are exposed to social and economic structures. Policarpo’s projects bring together research, narrative, sound, and visual forms, often using multimedia installation and performance to examine relationships between cultural systems, bodily experience, and forms of knowledge. Since the mid-2010s, Policarpo has presented her work extensively in Portugal and internationally. Her solo exhibitions have included presentations at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Xero, Kline and Coma in London, lAB Artists Unlimited in Bielefeld, Kunstverein Leipzig, Belo Campo/Galeria Francisco Fino in Lisbon, Gnration in Braga, Galeria Municipal do Porto, MAAT in Lisbon, Kunsthall Trondheim, and other institutions and contemporary art spaces. She has also participated in exhibitions and performances at venues including Whitechapel Gallery, ICA, LUX Moving Image, Kunsthall Oslo, and the Galeria Municipal do Porto. In 2019, Policarpo was awarded the EDP Foundation New Artists Award. The jury recognised the coherence of her research and narrative approach, particularly the innovative use of sound within a multimedia installation and its capacity to create an immersive relationship between concept and space. The award was presented by the EDP Foundation and MAAT as part of the 13th edition of the prize. In 2021, she received the illy Present Future Prize, further recognising her international artistic practice. Her work is held in collections including the Serralves Foundation, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the EDP Foundation and MAAT, among others. Across sound, moving image, sculpture, drawing, and installation, Policarpo develops a practice in which artistic and musical research become closely interconnected. Her works examine the relations between bodies, environments, systems of knowledge, and structures of power, using sound not simply as an accompanying element but as a material through which perception, experience, and meaning can be constructed.