Paula Siebra is a Brazilian painter born in Fortaleza, Ceará, in 1998. The artist focuses on images related to everyday life and scenes of intimacy using Brazilian northeastern culture as her starting point. Her paintings emerge from the exploration of established themes such as portraits, landscapes and still lifes. These motifs, throughout her research, acquire a peculiar aspect: a certain simplification in the contours, added to a reduction in the contrast between chromatic tones, polarising reality and reverie – as if the artist were daydreaming about ordinary life.
Read MoreIn addition to following a straightforward continuum from tradition, her paintings relate to an inherent visualness of her native land of Ceará and the Brazilian Northeast as a whole. She is particularly close to with folk art, since her interests encompass the synthetic form of clay objects, laces and other textile works such as crochet and embroidery, as well as the geometric and colourful architectural features of traditional houses. Surrounding villages, household objects and anonymous faces are elements of the landscape in which the artist is immersed, appearing as if clothed by a light mist that covers everything—alternately concealing or revealing them.
Siebra first exhibited at the Brazil National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro (2017). Since then, she has participated in several other group shows in Rio de Janeiro, in institutions such as Centro Cultural Light (2018) and Centro Cultural Correios (2019). Her first solo show, entitled 'Tenderness', took place at Fábrica Bhering (2019), Rio de Janeiro, and she had her first show titled Arrebalde at Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2020), followed by 'Arrebol', in New York (2021). She had her first residency in 2021 in Bruges, Belgium, which culminated in her show 'O Soar das Horas'. The artist currently lives and works in Fortaleza.
Text courtesy Mendes Wood DM.
