At the core of Cardim’s multi-media practice is a commitment to making work that questions social and political structures. His works express themes of social injustice through sculpture, video, and performance.

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Cardim’s work looks at how society perceives those who exist outside culturally dominant norms. Specifically, he is interested in how queers, people of color, and other minority groups question the status quo.

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His sculpture and time-based works explore how social constructs ultimately inform political ideology, legislation, and actions. In a social and political environment that often fosters separation, Cardim’s works argue for inclusion.

His sculpture brings together the contradictions of these social and political constructions: nail polish on lumber fragments, stitching through logs, applying 24 karat gold leaf on roughly cut timber. His video and performance work implicates his viewers. In Waiting Room for Your Last Meal, the audience becomes witness to the murder of Alex Nieto in an installation suggesting a crime scene and a performance memorializing his final movements. Notions of immigration and borders are captured in The Ways to See Water Move, and moving forward despite adversity is represented in Harbinger. His current studio work is exploring his cultural hybridity as a Brazilian-American.

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Some of his influences include Brazilian neo-Concrete artists like Hélio Oitícica and Lygia Pape, Post-minimalists like Felix Gonzales-Torres, and the performance work of Eiko & Koma and Robert Morris.

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Cardim was born in Brazil. He received a BFA in Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and an MFA from California College of the Arts. His work has been featured nationally and internationally in museums, galleries, universities, and film festivals in San Francisco, Oakland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, New York, and Milan.

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