I was born in Brazil in 1984, where I lived until I was 21, before joining the École des Beaux-Arts in Quimper in 2005. I obtained my DNSEP in 2009 and since then I have lived and worked in Rennes. Since graduating, drawing has been the foundation of my work. A nearly daily practice has taken root. I have always been deeply attached to the notion of gambiarra, which in Brazilian Portuguese refers to an act of adjustment, improvisation, or transformation to find a solution to a problem. I experiment with forms and materials using rather precarious tools that, over time, have naturally imposed themselves: all kinds of felt-tip pens, colored pencils, gouache, glitter glues, stickers, cut-out magazine photos, watercolor, inks, correction fluid, and other objects I happen to find at home or in the supermarket. Drawing floats between collage, painting, and sculpture. The boundaries become blurred.
In my drawings, there is a constant play between remnants of my childhood, Brazilian culture, and the things I observe and absorb from the reality around me. The subjects appear as mythological images that are formed through a close connection I build with my unconscious. There, a language and a tongue emerge that sometimes escape me.
“(…) Suddenly things no longer need to make sense. I am content to exist. Are you? I’m sure you are (…).”
— Clarice Lispector, fragment from A Breath of Life.
What interests me in this exploration are the unexpected relationships that arise between imaginary forms and figures inspired by my everyday life. This also led to experimenting with writing, a form that allows me to deepen and explore other poetic possibilities.
Like a drawing, a text is often born from a desire to name something that tickles me, from feelings of strangeness running through me. To look at the world, landscapes, bodies. To listen to words, to things that appear randomly in everyday life. These are the same things that stir thought, disturb intimacy, and push me in a search for meaning.
A meaning that may evoke my utopias, fictions I invent for myself, sometimes dramatic, sometimes ironic. In the end, the work weaves together an ensemble that reflects my relationship with reality. At times, simply describing that reality, and at others transforming it, like an act of creation-digestion.
Manoela Prates
