Isadora Neves Marques
(Lisbon, Portugal) is a filmmaker, visual artist and writer, born in Lisbon. She studied in Lisbon and London, later living and working in São Paulo and New York. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Her short films include As Minhas Sensações São Tudo o Que Tenho Para Oferecer (2024; La Semaine de la Critique, Cannes Film Festival), Tornar-se um Homem na Idade Média (2022; IFFR – International Film Festival Rotterdam, winner of the Ammodo Tiger Short Award for Best Short Film), A Mordida (2019; Wavelengths, Toronto International Film Festival, awarded Best Short Film at Go Short Nijmegen, Short Waves, Sicilia Queer Festival and MixBrasil, as well as the Kodak Award at MIEFF), and Semente Exterminadora (2017; IndieLisboa – International Film Festival). Her work has screened at hundreds of film festivals, including the New York Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal, London Short Film Festival, Winterthur, Berwick, Riga, Glasgow, Vilnius, Hamburg, Melbourne, Panorama, Le Cri du Court, Thessaloniki, and the European Film Awards. Together with producer Catarina de Sousa, she co-founded the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa in 2021. Her filmography has been the subject of retrospectives and focus programmes at Film Fest Gent (Belgium), Winterthur International Short Film Festival (Switzerland), HOME (Manchester), Eaton House (Hong Kong) and the e-flux Screening Room (New York), among others. She is currently developing two feature films, A Terceira Espécie and Amor no Paleolítico.
In contemporary art, she officially represented Portugal at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia in 2022 with the Portuguese Pavilion, which was named by Art News as one of the ten must-see pavilions of that edition. She was awarded the Pinchuk Future Generation Special Prize in 2022 and the Present Future Art Prize in 2018. Her work has been exhibited at leading art institutions such as the High Line, Museo Reina Sofía, CA2M, CaixaForum, Castello di Rivoli, MADRE, Palais de Tokyo, Frac Île-de-France, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Tate Modern, Renaissance Society, Wellcome Collection, MAAT, Museu Coleção Berardo, Galerias Municipais de Lisboa – Torreão Nascente, Beijing Inside Out Museum, Kyoto City University Arts Gallery and the Leeum Museum of Art, among others.
As a writer, she regularly publishes essays on art, cinema and theory, with texts appearing in e-flux journal (New York) and in publications by Verso, MIT Press and Sternberg Press. Together with Alice dos Reis, she co-founded the poetry publishing house Livros do Pântano in 2020, publishing her own poetry as well as the work of international authors in English and Portuguese. She is the author of the poetry books Biography of a Fiction (After8 Books, 2025), A Campa de Marx (Não Edições, 2025) and Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (Pântano, 2025), and of the short story collection Morrer na América (Abysmo, 2017). She has also edited numerous publications at the intersection of art and critical thought with international publishers such as Sternberg Press, e-flux journal and Archives Books.
Her short films include As Minhas Sensações São Tudo o Que Tenho Para Oferecer (2024; La Semaine de la Critique, Cannes Film Festival), Tornar-se um Homem na Idade Média (2022; IFFR – International Film Festival Rotterdam, winner of the Ammodo Tiger Short Award for Best Short Film), A Mordida (2019; Wavelengths, Toronto International Film Festival, awarded Best Short Film at Go Short Nijmegen, Short Waves, Sicilia Queer Festival and MixBrasil, as well as the Kodak Award at MIEFF), and Semente Exterminadora (2017; IndieLisboa – International Film Festival). Her work has screened at hundreds of film festivals, including the New York Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal, London Short Film Festival, Winterthur, Berwick, Riga, Glasgow, Vilnius, Hamburg, Melbourne, Panorama, Le Cri du Court, Thessaloniki, and the European Film Awards. Together with producer Catarina de Sousa, she co-founded the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa in 2021. Her filmography has been the subject of retrospectives and focus programmes at Film Fest Gent (Belgium), Winterthur International Short Film Festival (Switzerland), HOME (Manchester), Eaton House (Hong Kong) and the e-flux Screening Room (New York), among others. She is currently developing two feature films, A Terceira Espécie and Amor no Paleolítico.
In contemporary art, she officially represented Portugal at the 59th La Biennale di Venezia in 2022 with the Portuguese Pavilion, which was named by Art News as one of the ten must-see pavilions of that edition. She was awarded the Pinchuk Future Generation Special Prize in 2022 and the Present Future Art Prize in 2018. Her work has been exhibited at leading art institutions such as the High Line, Museo Reina Sofía, CA2M, CaixaForum, Castello di Rivoli, MADRE, Palais de Tokyo, Frac Île-de-France, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Tate Modern, Renaissance Society, Wellcome Collection, MAAT, Museu Coleção Berardo, Galerias Municipais de Lisboa – Torreão Nascente, Beijing Inside Out Museum, Kyoto City University Arts Gallery and the Leeum Museum of Art, among others.
As a writer, she regularly publishes essays on art, cinema and theory, with texts appearing in e-flux journal (New York) and in publications by Verso, MIT Press and Sternberg Press. Together with Alice dos Reis, she co-founded the poetry publishing house Livros do Pântano in 2020, publishing her own poetry as well as the work of international authors in English and Portuguese. She is the author of the poetry books Biography of a Fiction (After8 Books, 2025), A Campa de Marx (Não Edições, 2025) and Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (Pântano, 2025), and of the short story collection Morrer na América (Abysmo, 2017). She has also edited numerous publications at the intersection of art and critical thought with international publishers such as Sternberg Press, e-flux journal and Archives Books.
