Priscila Fernandes (1981, Portugal) is a visual artist and educator living and working in the Netherlands. Together with Edward Clydesdale Thomson, she is the Head of Department of the Bachelor of Fine Arts BEAR (Base for Experiment Art and Research) at ArtEZ, Arnhem.
Priscila Fernandes' work – installations, painting, photography, books – is rooted in an ongoing research into education, play, and the dialectics of work and leisure. Through a speculative and fictional approach, her work raises concrete questions about the idea of individual and collective freedom, especially in the context of the widespread precariousness of work in our society.
Priscila Fernandes studied at the National College of Art & Design (BA Fine Art Painting) in Dublin and at the Piet Zwart Institute (MA Fine Art) in Rotterdam. She was a resident artist at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, IAPSIS Stockholm and at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Her work has been exhibited widely. Recent exhibitions include Live Uncertainty - 32nd São Paulo Biennial with the installation Cuckoo Land and Other Futures; The Book of Aesthetic Education of the Modern School at Foundation Joan Miró, Barcelona; Back to the sandbox: Art and Radical Pedagogy, Reykjavik Art Museum; Playgrounds, Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid; PIGS, Artium Basque Museum; Learning for Life, Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; 12 Contemporaries, Serralves Museum, Porto; Those bastards in caps come to have fun and relax by the seaside instead of continuing to work in the factory, at TENT, Rotterdam; and This is the time. This is the Record of the Time at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. She is the winner Brutus Award in 2018 (AVL Mundo, Rotterdam) and Prémio EDP Novos Artistas in 2011 (Fundação EDP, Lisbon).