Carolina Serrano (b. 1994, Funchal, Portugal) lives and works between Cologne (DE) and Lisbon (PT).
She has a degree and a master's degree in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, as well as a postgraduate degree in Art Curatorship from FCSH, NOVA University Lisbon.
Serrano has been exhibiting her work regularly since 2018, with the following solo exhibitions standing out: Closed fists, open wrists, Galerie Alex Serra, Cologne (DE, 2023); Teeth to the bone, Text by Susana Ventura, Galeria UMA LULIK_, Lisbon (PT, 2023); What words to name, Text by Wilko Austermann, Galerie Alex Serra, Cologne (DE, 2021); Between the thumb and index finger, Text by Alexandre Melo, Galeria UMA LULIK_, Lisbon (PT, 2020) and Forever about to end, Curated by Mattia Tosti, Galeria FOCO, Lisbon (PT, 2020). Her group exhibitions include: Só porque foi, e voou. Coordinated by Ana Rito and José Maçãs de Carvalho, National Museum of Contemporary Art_ MNAC, Lisbon (PT, 2023/4); "Vom Gegenwärtigen. Und von der Entfernung", Text by João Silvério. Kunstraum Botschaft, Berlin (DE, 2023); Drawing was it one day. Curated by Susana Ventura. Cycle: Drawing as thought. Biblioteca Municipal de Albergaria-a-Velha, Aveiro (PT, 2023); Estoutro. Mercês Cultural Space, Lisbon. Curated by Beatriz Coelho, Francisca Gigante and Inês Espada Vieira, Lisbon (PT, 2019) and I will take the risk, Curated by Carolina Trigueiros and TH Studio, Tomaz Hipólito Studio, Marvila (PT, 2019).
In 2020, Serrano received a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's Visual Arts Support Program. In 2021 she also received the Auf Geht's Stipendum grant from the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia (DE) and in 2022 the NEUSTART KULTUR work and production grant from the Stiftung Kunstfonds Foundation, Bonn (DE). In 2022, she was named one of the 7 Women Artists of the Future at ARCO Madrid 2022.
Serrano's work and research revolves around the temporal dimension of sculpture, the dematerialization of sculpture, and the attempt to understand what it is to be human.
Serrano works mostly with wax, as it approximates the temperature and texture of human skin. Her current work, by approaching the idea of the human and the idea of the body, imbuing itself with a dual and extreme quality, where the play of forces that exists between contrary and apparently incompatible human concepts (violence/innocence, corporeality/immateriality) manifests itself in a single object, suggests an attempt to conceptualize what it is to be human. As we experience in our own language, in which many words (things) only exist through the existence of their opposite, the concept of "being between", linked to the attempt to define what it is to be human, is essential to her work, as the exploration of this "in-between" two opposing things, will be what she intends to materialize through sculpture.