Artist Biography

Nádia Duvall

Nádia Duvall (b. 1986, Spain; Portuguese nationality) is a Lisbon-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice unfolds across sculpture, drawing, painting, video, performance, literature, and cinema. Central to her work is the construction of multiple heteronyms — currently sixteen — through which she navigates autobiographical, social, and political questions, articulated through sustained philosophical inquiry.

Duvall holds a PhD in Fine Arts (2024), awarded Summa Cum Laude with Distinction by the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Her academic trajectory integrates advanced technological specialisations spanning cinema and visual arts, reinforcing the conceptual and technical breadth of her practice.

She has received numerous distinctions, including the BANIF Painting Revelation Award (2008), the Arte, Ciência e Tecnologia Prize by DG Artes in partnership with Ciência Viva, the Jovens Criadores grant from the Centro Nacional da Cultura (2016), and the Young European Creation Prize at the Museu Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso in partnership with the JCE Biennale (2019). She was awarded a prestigious FCT doctoral fellowship (2019–2023) and has been repeatedly recognised with Merit distinctions at the Luxembourg Art Prize.

Her moving-image works have gained international recognition. GREEN SCREAM (42’, 2024) received Best Experimental Film at the WSXA Barcelona Film Festival and honourable mentions at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival and WSXA & ARFF International Film Festival. Her second film, THE BLUE HOUR (13’, 2025), was awarded Best Experimental Film at the London Indie Film Festival (2026)

Curatorial Note

Nádia Duvall’s practice operates through multiplicity. The creation of heteronyms is not merely a literary device but a structural methodology, allowing the artist to inhabit shifting positions of authorship, identity, and critical distance. Through these constructed selves, Duvall interrogates autobiographical narratives, political frameworks, and the instability of subjectivity.

Her multidisciplinary approach resists confinement to a single medium. Sculpture, film, performance, and text function as parallel territories of inquiry, each expanding the philosophical concerns at the core of her work. Rather than seeking coherence through stylistic unity, Duvall embraces fragmentation as a productive force.

In her cinematic projects, this multiplicity becomes particularly visible. The moving image extends her investigation into temporality and perception, transforming internal discourse into visual and auditory experience. Across media, her work insists on complexity, inviting viewers into layered systems of thought where identity is continuously constructed, deconstructed, and renegotiated.

Duvall’s practice situates itself between conceptual rigor and performative intensity, forming a body of work that is both intellectually demanding and structurally expansive.

– Joana Rousseau