Margarida Sardinha is an independent artist & director born in Lisbon, Portugal – 1978, who studied, lived and worked in London for ten years.
She attended Fine Art Combined Media studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Her cross-media practice comprises site-specific installation, experimental film and animation, performance, text, sound, photography and symbolic study drawings, which are by definition conceptualist geometric-kinetic and abstract minimal works. Its main focus is the production of geometrical optical illusions a propos the spiritual in art, thus, making concept parallels within literature, philosophy, comparative religion, science, film and art. Using these perceptions she searches for spiritual/psychological stages of consciousness and relates them with cycles of individual or universal growth. She re-accesses the deconstruction of dogmas from a geometric-archetypal stand in which the relation between immutability and mutability is constantly challenged and reviewed through dynamic symmetry. Archetypal geometry, dynamic symmetry, symbology and colour being the basis of the work are explored in a transmutative semiotic process of building, photographing and animating these “signs” that are understood as imprinted/innate forms of consciousness which enable us to see, hear and speak aesthetically, emotionally, logically, spiritually and politically.
Hiligts the projects Oxymoron Tiling 2019, Wave-Particle HyperLightness 2018 and also the individual exhibition Hyperbolic Hyparxis 2017 at Science College of the University of Lisbon; four individual exhibitions of Symmetry’s Portal (2014-16) e Darkness Reflexions (2003-4) respectively exposed at the Carousel-London, at the Aga Khan Foundation’s Ismaili Centre in Lisbon and at Casa de Cultura Jaime Lobo e Silva in Ericeira e na Casa Museu Fernando Pessoa em Lisbon. A selection of works from the series Symmetry’s Portal at Capela do Solar dos Póvoas within the scope of Simpósio Internacional de Arte Contemporânea da Guarda; and was invited to exhibit Loop Log in the Machine Cycle for the End of Real at Galeria Square Waves, Ericeira.
He also participated in the New Art Fest ’17 as a guest artist with an installation and the Hyperbolic Hyparxis series film. At The New Art Fest ’16, organized by Ocupart and curated by António Cerveira Pinto, she presented the digital animation film London Memory multi + city at the Web Summit and at the Natural History Museum and also the film Knotwork at the Fabrica Features storefront space at Largo Camões in Lisbon. In November 2015, Margarida Sardinha was invited to join the collective digital art exhibition “Reflections” at the Opera Gallery in London curated by Neil McConnon.
Margarida Sardinha is the director of Hyperbolic Hyparxis (2015), Master Mercy Matrix (2013), London Memory multi+city (2013) and HyperLightness ad absurdum (2011), experimental films and was the Winner of Best Cinematic Vision Awarded by London Film Awards, UK, Best Experimental Film at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival, Great Lakes Film Festival, Creative Arts Film Festival & Bridge Fest (Vancouver) and Best Spiritual & Religious Film at the Directors Circle Film Festival; it further won an Honourable Mention at the 23rd New Orleans Film Festival and the Awards of Merit by the Lucerne International Film Festival, The Indie, The Accolade and Rochester International Film Festival.
HyperLightness ad absurdum was 2012 Official Selection of over 20 film festivals worldwide such as: Revelation Perth International Film Festival, San Francisco Frozen Film Festival (nominated for Best Experimental Film), 10th In the Palace International Short Film Festival, Take Two Film Festival in New York, MIA@TheArmory, Beam Festival, 5th Columbia Gorge International Film Festival, MIX on Transmedia Writing and Digital Creativity, 7th International Streaming Festival, Denver Underground Film Festival, New Jersey Film Festival, Rockland Shorts International Series, Gold Lion Film Festival, Magmart Film & Video Festival…
She has also exhibited her site-specific installation work both in museums, galleries and biennales in London, Lisbon and New York with the most important being: the solo show “Darkness Reflexions” at the Fernando Pessoa Museum.
Selected for “Pan-Demonium” at AC Institute [Direct Chapel] with “HyperSelf Light Dance”; selected for Red Bull Music Academy Showcase with ”They had a whole army sitting on their door step (…) Gil Vicente and “I detest your views but am prepared to die for your right to express them (Voltaire)”; selected for Bienal Jovens Valoures 2009 at Galeria Vieira da Silva with “The Master”.
Margarida was also one of the founders of the London based group pARTart and the curator of the group’s exhibition “London Recycled” at the Menier Chocolate Factory comprising 22 new works by the London based artists from ten diverse artistic discipline’s backgrounds and eleven different nationalities exploring London’s multiculturalism and multidisciplinary pluralism; through the show and its collateral promotional and fundraising events where she performed Vjing at several London’s East End venues along with the performances of invited emerging music bands and other members of the group live pieces, she created over one year the necessary conditions for these artists to produce new work re-accessing their respective individual cyclic experience of London’s living making it a collective mirror of the city arts scenery. She won the Prize of Jovens Criadores (Young Creators Prize) awarded by the Portuguese Cultural Ministry and the Grupo Artes e Ideias in 1999.
