ARTIST STATEMENT
My creation is strongly impacted by personal processes and my way of seeing the world. Jacques Cousteau, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, beach and surf are some of my childhood experiences that have a common issue that permeates all my artistic production: water. The fluid appears in the technique, represented visually or metaphorically in issues such as transformation, balance point, adaptation and cleanliness.
In the technique, my creation takes place from contact with water, with malleable forms that have water in their composition or from the dissolution of the matter. In this sense, clay presents itself as a fluid that can be handled, always changing its shape through my touch.
By handling the materials, my production takes place in a handmade way. Even in the production of a canvas I carry out the exploration of the manual elaboration of the material. The canvases are placed on the floor and the tissue papers are shaped, building layers with water and paper – like oceanic surfaces that overlap with new waves or the water movement.
The essential conceptual issue of my creation is the nature of things - both environmental and human nature are explored in their beauty, flaws, traditions and contradictions. With a background in the study of marine biology, since the beginning of my career as an artist I have created ceramic pieces inspired by the nature of the oceans. Transformation, destruction, rebirth and breaking point are present.
My research also incorporates elements of popular cultures and ancestral wisdom. There are Brazilian icons and also ancient American, Asian, African and European cultures icons. In Tree of Love, for example, I took the traces of the I Ching as a visual iconology to be applied.
The superposition of materials on the canvas is due to my need to manipulate the material. They are made as if I were building something, functioning as a flat sculpture. In Cocar, for example, I used a traditional Brazilian fabric called “xita” to create the background, which received numerous layers of plaster. With small wooden sticks and cut paper I reproduced bird feathers. Some feathers were made from colored paper cut out, others with feathers printed and cut from the paper - creating a paper version of a real feather. Strings, ropes and flowers were also applied. The result is an indigenous headdress created with paper not applied to the canvas, but created from the canvas.
During the pandemic, I started a process of reaction to a depression and various personal issues that is metaphorized in my current production. I started creating ceramic bombs and weapons that also deal with phenomenons like destruction and rebirth. In this series, I try to explore our psychological nature and, at the same time, propose a reflection on our turning points – how a destructive reaction can be the beginning of something that is being built.