In the exhibition, Isabel Carvalho thinks about water, in its states and shapes, and as a metaphor of fluidity and solidity, of limit and infinity, giving privilege to the sense of audition. In a broad sense, the artist reflects about decorating as an attitude of searching for a preferential individual order and as an exercise of self-discipline, in the deconstruction and cluttering of definite places and in the attempt to reconstruct and rearrange those very same – spatial and discursive – places. The show is composed by a set of objects made in the glass industries that still exist in the Portuguese region of Marinha Grande and by a publication with drawings, suggested by the reading of texts characterized by a fluidity of language. Among them, “The temptation of Quiet Veronica”, by Robert Musil, was one of the most relevant. The title of the exhibition refers to the geographical coastal location, but it also suggests a way of designating the present. As Isabel Carvalho defines it, “Orla” is “a place of encounter and confrontation; a dynamic and intense line, with constant shakings; where there are disputations for the territory; cutting and configuration in a permanent updating of its limits; where a diversity of promising alternatives can be found; it is, in a close perspective, a mobile
textured mesh...”

2012