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My name is Marcia Xavier, and I was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais.
I live and work in São Paulo, now I am living in Rome for two months for an art residency program.
To tell about my trajectory, it is nice to talk about my childhood.
My father was an airline pilot and used to film and photograph the traveling he did in Brazil,
the landings and takeoffs. These turned into sessions of projections at home after dinner.
When I started my artistic research, I noticed how this repertory of images is a foundation in my work.
I inherited from my father the taste of the aerial image.
Aerial images have this freer character, a situation in which you don't have your feet on the ground.
It is a different vision and perspective of reality.
Photography has always been important in my work, but it always had a three-dimensional intention.
I always wanted to construct things with the image.
At the same time, I wanted to make these objects interact with the spectator.
I started making objects inspired by optical instruments, such as binoculars, telescopes,
and spyglasses, and these objects are made with aerial images and mirrors.
And these instruments invite the viewer to take part in an experiment,
which I call a hybrid between film and sculpture.
Inside the object, you have, on the mirror, the image distorting as we walk.
This causes a slight vertigo and this creates an interesting instability in my work.
In a second phase, I transform these objects in a scale where we can enter with our bodies,
since the work has this intention, and the work invites you to enter it,
since the work is an invitation for the viewer to dive in.
I created elevators, which are these boxes you can enter.
The experience is not only of the eye, but also of the body, with this distortion of movement.
Slowly I start substituting the mirrors in my work with water,
and I start constructing sculptural objects that interact, and that are more like installations,
so they start dialoguing more with the environment. I start making installations.
These objects are the eye of the water, which are large suspended lenses.
Since they are always located in external area, dialoguing with the city, with nature,
all that passes through these lenses is transformed and distorted according to our walks.
The eye of the water is a horizontal situation, while in the vertical situation are the prisms.
I make large screens that also create the same situation of the water transforming the place.
About the work for the exhibition— the work is titled Niemeyer Gaudí.
It is also a three-dimensional object, and the image of the work is of a building by [Oscar] Niemeyer,
who was a very important Brazilian architect working with organic architecture.
This work is different from the other, since it allows you to interact through touch.
It is more sensorial; it invites us to move the lenses that are placed horizontally over the photo,
and you get the image transforming as in an anamorphosis,
and this building of Niemeyer becomes something else, what I will call Gaudí.
This is what I thought was the most similar to the result of the transformed image.
In response to the last question, which expands on how the social and political environment contributed to my work,
I think that in terms of the geography it is more explicit and obvious,
since I really work with images of Brazil, with aerial images of oceans and horizons.
Even the work I am showing at this exhibition, which is a building of Niemeyer's in Brazil,
I think it shows this geographic repertoire in a clear manner.
In terms of its social and political issues, since the work is part of me, it is what I live,
it shows my work in some maybe more subliminal manner, and not as obvious.
I think my work makes a political commentary about the kind of life we live today.
Things are very fast and very unstable, like labyrinths,
and all the distortions in my work are a political commentary.
But I don't see that as something that is Brazilian.
It exemplifies the type of life we live in the world. It shares this similarity in this way.