Conceptual nominee

All my works are autoportraits developed in the context of a self-focused performance in total solitude. Via a meditative state I create through symbolically charged objects an external stage as a pictorial allegory that correlates with my internal world. The camera is my instrument to communicate between interior and exterior,
my role develops fluidly and intuitively as I act. I am interested in the poetic presentation of body and space and the relations between the human subject and the objects as mysterious placeholders of unconscious meanings and correlations.
The works, although generated digitally, are left unretouched and are not edited.

EDUCATION

1995 – 2005 Architectural studies, Graz University of Technology
2000 – 2001 Academy for Applied Photography, Graz
2006 Vocational School for Photography, Graz
2006 – 2007 Spéos – L´Ecole des Photographes Internationaux,
Paris
2009 – 2011 Post-graduate Masters Program in Art & Economy, University of Applied Arts Vienna

recent group exhibitions:

Precious time, Artmark Galerie, Wien, 2016
Divine Connection, Sarto art agency, Waidhofen a.d. Ybbs, 2016
TRANSITIONS – vom langsamen fluß der bilder, Galerie Lattemann, Darmstadt, 2016
ACSA 15, Autocenter contemporary art, Berlin, 2015
TRANSITIONS – the gentle transference of images, Artmark Galerie, Vienna, 2015
Für die Fülle, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, 2013


Isabel Belherdis moves between ritualistic self-concealment and unconditional exposure in her autobiographical and self-fictionalized works. Featuring allegorical-sounding titles like Serendipity, Passio, Jardin, or Aletheia, her series of images are the result of prior research into traditional image motifs, generated in the context of self-focused performances whose dramatic composition Belherdis develops in situ.

The camera, operated via remote release, represents not only an instrument of voyeuristic desire in Belherdis´work but also a medium of communication for participating in a world of interiority, of solitude, of self-exploration, and of the poetic presentation of body and space.