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Overview

Cantuária refuses an identification with the official narrative and opts for a contrarian reading, pictorially instrumentalizing insurgent utopian images / monuments, integrated into the history of social exclusion, labor exploitation and environmental degradation.

– Aldones Nino, La Larga Noche de los 500 Años, 2019

Brazilian artist, lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Marcela develops paintings that intertwine historical images from the universe of politics to representations of contemporary visual culture. Part of her pictorial inventions comes from research on the struggles waged by women around the world, such as the work Sônia, which pays homage to a riverside communist guerrilla woman killed by military agents in the Araguaia region, during Brazil's first military coup in 1964.

Selected Works
  • Marcela Cantuária, Senti como se um grande grito infinito atravessasse a natureza, 2022
    Senti como se um grande grito infinito atravessasse a natureza, 2022
  • Marcela Cantuária, Fogueira doce, 2022
    Fogueira doce, 2022
  • Marcela Cantuária, As três idades de Elizabeth Teixeira, 2021
    As três idades de Elizabeth Teixeira, 2021
  • Marcela Cantuária, Guadalupe Campanur Tapia, 2021
    Guadalupe Campanur Tapia, 2021
  • Marcela Cantuária, Maria Augusta Thomaz, 2021
    Maria Augusta Thomaz, 2021
  • Marcela Cantuária, Espiral de ilusão, 2020
    Espiral de ilusão, 2020
  • Marcela Cantuária, Terceira margem do rio, 2020
    Terceira margem do rio, 2020
  • Marcela Cantuária, Juanas - Juana Ramirez e Juana Raymundo, 2020
    Juanas - Juana Ramirez e Juana Raymundo, 2020
  • Marcela Cantuária, Ou isto ou aquilo, 2020
    Ou isto ou aquilo, 2020
  • Marcela Cantuária, Pega, mata e come, 2020
    Pega, mata e come, 2020
Selected Exhibitions
The South American Dream | curated by Jennifer Inácio | Pérez Art Museum Miami | Miami, USA, 2023 © Oriol Tarridas, courtesy PAMM
In the gallery
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Biography

Brazilian artist, lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Marcela develops paintings that intertwine historical images from the universe of politics to representations of contemporary visual culture. Part of her pictorial inventions comes from research on the struggles waged by women around the world, such as the work Sônia, which pays homage to a riverside communist guerrilla woman killed by military agents in the Araguaia region, during Brazil's first military coup in 1964. Cantuária elaborates confrontations narratives for a society structured in sexism and misogyny, thus creating her own vocabulary, whose particularities are cohesive with the creative process, the chromatic palette and the articulations that emerge from the open and latent layers of her paintings. Influences spread in a curious combination, the works are reconnections with social facts that have been repeatedly diminished, erased or badly treated by history, so her body of work seeks to dialogue with questions about the position of women in society, class struggle, division of powers, gender stereotypes and disputes over political meanings. Film frames, media and journalistic images, figurative miscellany of the unconscious and daily photographic records depict women's bodies, soldiers, burning landscapes, domestic animals and wild beasts integrate Marcela's canvases in an intercrossed and anachronistic plan, circular and confusing, like the contemporary image rotational system, typical of how virtual communication networks play mindsets.

 

She holds a BA in Painting from the School of Fine Arts at UFRJ. In March 2023 inaugurated her first solo exhibition in the USA, “The South American Dream”, at Pérez Art Museum Miami; and “Bestiário”, her first solo in Portugal. In 2022, she presented the solo shows “Propostas de Reencantamento” at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo and “invocación del pasado a la velocidad del ahora” at CentroCentro, Madrid. In 2021, “Esperança Equilibrista” at Caixa de Pandora, São Paulo and “Figure the impossible” at Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, in 2020. In 2022 she participated in the artistic residency at Fountaihead in Miami, and in 2023 will participate at the residencies L’AiR Arts in France and Bordallo Pinheiro in Portugal. In 2019, at the gallery A Gentil Carioca, she opened the solo show “La Larga Noche de los 500 años”, the same year she opened “Suturar, Libertar” at Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica and participated in the collective “Histórias Feministas”, at MASP and “Estratégias do Feminino” at Farol Santander in Porto Alegre. Her works are part of the collections of Museu da Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, and Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

 

CV