Cinthia Marcelle was born in Belo Horizonte (1974) and lives and works in São Paulo since 2010. The artist works across various media, including drawing, collage, photography, video, performance and installation. Her production centers on the advancement of her working method - a very delicate operation that unravels over time, in a movement of immersion into and distancing from the world. Her works have a temporal character, which is evident in the practice of repetition and accumulation. Constantly shifting between the organization and disorganization of things (and of her own work methodology), Marcelle creates interventions characterised by new arrangements and circuits that challenge the norms of current hegemonic structures.
Read More"My creativity emerges from the fusion with the world: in my view, art is not above anything, the artist is not above anyone, everything blends together and this impurity is what is at the origin of my creative process. We can only reinvent the world by starting with the world itself". (CM)
Works done in collaboration with other artists and participation in collective projects are also recurrent practices in her practice.
Among her most recent solo exhibitions are A Morta (Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2018); Family in Disorder: Truth or Dare (Modern Art Oxford, 2017); Project 105: Cinthia Marcelle (MoMA PS1, New York, 2016) and Dust Never Sleeps (Secession, Vienna, 2014).
Recent group shows include A Clearing in the Forest (Tate Modern, London, 2022); Língua Solta (Museum of the Portuguese Language, São Paulo, 2021); Soft Power (SFMOMA, San Francisco, 2019); Push the Limits (Fondazione Merz, Torino, 2019); La Panacée (MoCo, Montpellier, 2019); and Still Here (MOAD - Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, 2019).
Cinthia Marcelle represented Brazil at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) with the installation Hunting Ground, receiving a Special Mention from the jury. She participated in numerous international biennales such as the 10th Berlin Biennale: We Don't Need Another Hero (2018); 5th Lubumbashi Biennale, Congo (2017); 11th and 12th Sharjah Biennale: Re:emerge (2013) and The Past, The Present, The Possible (2015); New Museum Triennial: The Ungovernables (2012); 29th São Paulo Biennale: There is always a glass of sea for a man to sail (2010).
Marcelle’s work is represented in several national and international collections including Instituto Inhotim (Brumadinho), Instituto Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), MAM (São Paulo), KADIST (San Francisco), MASP (São Paulo), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, MoMA (New York), Pinault Collection (Paris), The Royal Library of Denmark (Copenhagen), SFMOMA (San Francisco), Tate Modern (London), and Vebhi Koç Foundation (Istanbul).
In 2022, Cinthia Marcelle has upcoming solo exhibitions, at MACBA (Barcelona) and at MASP (São Paulo), accompanied by the launch of two publications.
Text courtesy Luisa Strina.
