Carla Filipe

Carla Filipe’s work operates in an area where the boundaries between so-called high culture and popular culture are inevitably merging. Far removed from the convenient formalism that runs through a significant portion of contemporary creation, she has developed an activity anchored in drawing – where her visually and conceptually robust projects are underpinned by various types of reminiscences. Whether involving works that revisit her family’s past, or enquireies related to Portugal, as well as political and social idiosyncrasies.
Although Carla Filipe also works directly with three-dimensional works and space, her most familiar terrain, as stated above, is drawing – which she mixes together with writing in a kind of uninterrupted streams of consciousness. One of the factors that underlines the effectiveness of this modus operandi derives precisely from this procedural dimension, wherein the subjects and respective artistic treatment collapse into their own distinctive dimension, which we may designate as – archeology of the present.
Carla Filipe studied Fine Arts – Sculpture in Faculdade de Belas-Artes (Universidade do Porto). From 2003 to 2007, she is co-founder of two artist-run projects in Porto – Salão Olímpico and Projecto Apêndice that become the biggest references of that type of project in town. In 2009, she won a scholarship from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian for a residency at ACME Studios (London). In 2014 the artist was invited to complete a residency at AIR Antwerpen (a collaboration with Kunsthalle Lissabon). In 2015 was invited to The Rauschenberg Residency, Florida, USA.