In the 5th edition of the BoCA Bienal, the performance cycle in natural spaces “I want to see my mountains” returns with three performances by artists Isabel Cordovil, Gemma Luz Bosch and Janet Nóvas who revisit Beuys’ legacy. Between Lisbon and Madrid, their new creations create new links between art, ecology and imagination.
From the Bronze Age to the environmental urgencies of the present, this performance investigates the evolution of the shield as an object of protection, transforming defense into a poetic and political gesture. Through a narrative that crosses archaeology, activism and fiction, the work reveals the continuity between shields that protect human bodies and those improvised to defend non-human bodies, such as urban trees.
The starting point for the research is the 2004 Madrid protests, in which demonstrators created human barriers to save the trees on the Paseo del Prado. Inspired by this act, the performance projects a new chapter for this story: the presentation of an “Anti-Felling Shield” designed for the 2025 controversy in Lisbon, where the jacaranda trees on Avenida 5 de Outubro are under threat.
The performance invites the public on a reflective walk, starting at the Goethe-Institut in Madrid and the National Library in Lisbon, towards the site of the action, collectively reimagining the relationship between care, resistance and public space.
Biography
The work of Isabel Cordovil (Portugal, 1994) develops between notions of narrative archaeology and symbolic reinvention. Her field of action encompasses installation and sculpture - often marked by a theatrical sensibility and a deep involvement with the materials, forms and rituals of iconographic tradition - with the aim of reinventing and re-exploring myths, folklore, religious imagery, literature, dreamscapes and the collective unconscious. Cordovil sees language and symbols as mutable instruments for creating meaning, welcoming misinterpretation, manipulation and playful distortion as strategies for expanding his agency.
About the cycle “I Want to See my Mountains”
In 2021, on Joseph Beuys’ centenary, BoCA inaugurated the project “The Defense of Nature”, a ten-year proposal based on the action 7,000 Oaks to think about ecology as an artistic and collective gesture. Inclusive and participatory, the project invites citizens to plant trees and name them, in a practice that extends Beuys’ idea that “we can all be artists”. This initial gesture is followed by the creation of performances, meetings and debates, combining artistic programming with the creation of natural spaces. It was in this context that the “I Want to See my Mountains” cycle was born, curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes. Artists such as Sara Bichão, Diana Policarpo, Dayana Lucas, Gustavo Sumpta, Gustavo Ciríaco, Musa paradisiaca and the Berru collective created interventions in the natural landscapes of Lisbon, Almada and Faro.