Ana Mazzei's sculptures and installations draw from literature, architecture, and theatre to stage fictional scenarios that encourage viewers to consider how we perform for each other on a daily basis.
Read MoreBorrowing from the ideas of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, authors of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) and the Theater of the Oppressed (1974), Mazzei's stages open into fictional settings that bring awareness to the actions associated with them.
For the installation Corpo Parede (Wall Body) (2018), Mazzei invited viewers to position their bodies in different ways within four wooden structures set along a dark blue wall at the Museum of Modern Art São Paulo to explore the possibilities offered by each arrangement.
Other installations are larger in scale, depicting the barebone structures of models of old cities, monuments, and amphitheatres. Mazzei's 'Templo' series (2020), for instance, featured wooden panels cut from shapes inspired by the architecture of Pompeii.
Amongst works in the series, Templo — Face Norte (2020) recreated a wooden enclosure made from various shapes: a circle attached to a semi-circle by two horizontal poles, a vertical cloud, and a stick-figure-like form in profile.
Mazzei's commission for the Pipe Factory, Glasgow (2021) adapted the 'Templo' series into free-standing sculptural forms spread across two floors, which formed a temple arranged in a semi-circle that greeted viewers as if in confrontation.
Accompanied by a rhythmic soundtrack, the installation of figurative and primitive shapes hinted at the historical and the mythological, while remaining open to the possibility of alternative narratives and interpretations.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse (1927), Mazzei's exhibition Sleepwalk (2021) explored the space between consciousness and sleep with a series of wooden sculptures placed between black curtains, including the freestanding mask on a wooden bipod Sombras IV (2021).
Accompanying the physical stage were smaller works like the wall-mounted sculpture Cogumelo VI (2021), a miniature amphitheatre rendered in a clouded red and blue-greens with swirls of yellow, raising associations with the theatrical and the surreal.
Made from found materials, sculptures like Cadeira Trono and Cadeira Meditacao (both 2021) depict bare-framed wooden chairs decorated with embroidered velvet cushions, with rays of light illuminating one and stars and waves on the other.
As Stephanie Bailey notes in a 2022 Insight for Ocula Magazine, 'Each freestanding sculpture seems to embody the role of character and spectator at once.' Recontre (2021), two semi-circles placed face to face, well articulates these physical entanglements.
