Backilt Studios
Alfred House, Ashley Street, Sneinton
Nottingham NG3 1JG
STATEMENT
The structure of my artistic practice often relates to books. I have a large collection. A single image viewed as a child awakened a deep curiosity in the relationship between the body in space and the body as space. My work reflects this interest.
My studio practice is deeply ritualistic: the way I occupy the space and surfaces. I create
assemblages containing elements collected from different sources and in addition live
performance. Through live art I create work that feeds my painting and drawing. My practice is essentially symbolic integrating sources from literature, cinema, personal narratives and current events. The subject of each work determines the materials and form of the work, a changing field.
Through drawing, painting, performance and installation I create non-linear narratives impregnated with references. A recurrent theme is the presence of a group of nomadic women, the "Ginaiques", simultaneously self-referential, essentially foreign. Nomadism is expressed as a strategy of escape from identity homogenising processes. Such processes have buried the diversity of women's lives and culture. In my projects I begin each series by listening to the speech of women, their unique expression of experiences relating to their action as social force A primary aim of my practice is to share experiences between women from different cultures, their affections and mutual bonds.
Marcia Porto mainly uses symbolism in her work. On the walls of her studio, Marcia gathers images and texts and from these she creates non-linear narratives on large panels.The artist attained her Bachelors in Fine Art in 1987 and her Masters in Visual Poetics in 2008, both from Unicamp, Campinas, Brazil. She lives and works in Nottingham, UK.
The Ginaiques
It has been reported that these women have yearned for a place to exist. Wanderers that they were, they would spend a day with four words: inversion, transposition, inundation and irradiation. For many generations, the Ginaiques have forgotten their origin – and now, freed from the order of time, they evoke:
– “When did we leave the door open?”
FLORA
I first saw your image at the age of ten.
Child in the cousin´s library, I closed the door, leaving behind the coffee aroma, voices, laughter...
I opened a green backed book, with the image of a woman shedding milk into a bowl, next to a window of magical light.
On each page, an universe. So you arrived, with this gesture that I never tire of imitating (I even made a bracelet).
Your burnt Sienna hair, without the diadem, is certainly long. The kalathos-vortex, which you hold in your left hand, houses and propagates flowers simultaneously.
Your garments, the yellow tunic – what does it feel like to wear fluid and wind?
What space is this where you (not) step?
What is it like to live in a restricted palette, with so many subtle possibilities of unfolding?
Are you picking or growing flowers?
Flora di Stabiae
I – 45 d.C.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli