Backilt Member
Alfred House, Ashley Street, Sneinton
Nottingham NG3 1JG
Márcia Porto mainly uses symbolism in her work. She seeks to create spaces of contemplation where the intersections of gender, identity, environmental collapse, vulnerability and movement unfold in quiet but potent gestures. The artist attained her Bachelors in Fine Art in 1987 and her Masters in Visual Poetics in 2008, both from Unicamp, Campinas, Brazil. Porto lives and works in Nottingham, UK.
STATEMENT
I am a Brazilian artist, educator, and researcher based in Nottingham. My interdisciplinary practice encompasses mural, drawing, performance, painting, and installation, where I engage drawing and performance as daily rituals of exploration. My work investigates the intricate relationship between the body and natural and humanised spaces, emphasizing embodied experiences, corporeality and spatial politics.
The body and natural and humanised spaces also create codes of meaning for the sensitive and emotional experience of pain, be it physical or through the processes of environmental dis-identification and exploration in a social and political context. This investigation encompasses the resulting vulnerable mental states, which can dull reflection. My approach begins by recognising pain as a symbolic field of collective and individual ‘healing processes’ and its complex subjectivity - not to be consumed by its paralysing effect or by the search for metaphorical analgesia, but rather to transform and activate it in a daily exercise of affirming coexistence as empowerment.
As an artist from Brazil, a country marked by systemic violence against women, my practice is deeply committed to amplifying women's voices as sites of empowerment and resilience. Central to my research is exploring itineraries traced by nomadic women, whose nomadism functions as both a metaphor and a strategy against homogenized identities.
Through my practice, I seek to create spaces of contemplation where the intersections of gender, identity, environmental collapse, vulnerability and movement unfold in quiet but potent gestures.
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