José Carlos Teixeira (b. 1977, Porto, Portugal) is a visual artist, filmmaker, researcher and educator. His interdisciplinary work involves video-essay, documentary, installation, text and photography. Through participatory and performative structures, he investigates notions of identity, boundary, exile and displacement. The relationship with, and the critical representation of otherness occupy a central role in his aesthetic materializations. In his socially-engaged practice, situated between cinema and anthropology, Teixeira is concerned with generating an encounter and framing the moment. Genuinely open to what the situation and the participants have to offer, he is interested in carving space for empathy and intersubjectivity, while rethinking the complex and ever-evolving politics of representation in the realms of art, cinema and culture at large.
Born and raised in Portugal, José Carlos Teixeira holds an MFA from UCLA Art Department (Interdisciplinary Studio), and a BFA from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Porto. His work has been widely exhibited and screened internationally in venues such as LACE, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), UnionDocs, Anthology Film Archives (NY), MOCA, The Sculpture Center (Cleveland), Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts (Princeton), Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart), DAZ, Rosalux (Berlin), 104 Cent Quatre (Paris), NCCA (Moscow), M. K. Ciurlionis National Museum (Kaunas), Oiticica Art Center (Rio de Janeiro), VideoBrasil, SP Cultural Center (São Paulo), Oriente Foundation (Macao), MNAC, Museu da Cidade, Gulbenkian Foundation, Carmona e Costa Foundation (Lisbon), Museu FBAUP, Galeria do Palácio, MausHábitos (Porto), and at the Instituto Camões Cultural Centers (Luanda, Maputo, Brasília), to name a few. Recent solo shows at MNSR (Porto), MAAT (Lisbon), SPACES (Cleveland), MMOCA (Madison), and AANM (Detroit). His films have circulated in numerous film and video festivals: LIDF, SMHAF, Eindhoven Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Arthouse Asia, Currents: New Media Festival, AIFVF, AFFESTNYC, among others, and included in the media libraries of HotDocs and Visions du Réel. Teixeira has been the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, Gulbenkian Foundation Scholarship, Efroymson Award/Contemporary Arts Fellowship, Best Documentary + Jurors Award at the AFFEST 2019 (New York), SMHAF Experimental Film Award 2019 (Glasgow), FUSO Video Festival Jury Prize 2011 (Lisbon), and the 2005 EDP New Artists Prize nomination. In addition, Teixeira was an artist-in-residence at the prestigious Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), MacDowell Colony, 18th Street Arts Center, and the Headlands Center for the Arts (USA), as well the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo (Egypt). In addition, he has taught at ESAD.cr (PT), CWRU and CIA, and UW-Madison (USA), over the last decade and a half. Teixeira has three published monographs on his practice, and is included in a number of group-show catalogues. He currently lives and works in the USA.