A TOURIST IN OTHER PEOPLE'S REALITY__features the latest works by Alice Quaresma (b. 1985, Brazil) and Goia Mujalli (b. 1985, Brazil). Both artists share the unique perspective and at times troubling experience of being Brazilian immigrants in London, UK. Themes of belonging and loss, nostalgia and memory have consistently played a central role in the artistic practices of Quaresma and Mujalli. Quaresma explores these themes through the medium of experimental photography. She takes her personal archive of landscape photographs and transforms them by adding lines, shapes, and colours, infusing these images with fresh connotations. Her artistic process blurs the line between imagination and reality, creating a dynamic overlap and collision of these two realms. Goia Mujalli's creative focus centres on producing vibrant paintings and mixed-media works. Her pieces incorporate repetitive organic motifs and elements that conjure a sense of rhythm and the illusion of movement.
For Alice Quaresma, the embodiment of home is the beach scenes of Rio de Janeiro. She obliterated Brazilian sea views through collaged images which are recharged through formal and gestural abstract interventions in different media. Geometrical elements, present in Quaresma's oeuvre reference the Brazilian Neo-Concrete Movement and serve as links to the artists' cultural roots. These colourful interventions simultaneously question the realism of photography inviting viewers to interact with the imagery through activating their imagination.
Goia Mujalli's abstract compositions embrace organic motifs, stitched lines and vibrant patterns that evoke the tropical landscapes of her hometown, Rio de Janeiro. With a fascination for tropical botany, the artist explores how certain plant species adapt to and thrive in diverse environments outside of their Brazilian native habitat. These organic elements become integral to her colourful compositions, manifesting as repetitive patterns that delve into the complex themes of remembrance and the act of distancing oneself from one's origins.
Press release courtesy Patrick Heide Contemporary Art.
