BIO
MIRTA (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1952) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. A psychoanalyst by training and clinical practice since 1973, she began her studies in arts in 1990 with watercolor, moving on to drawing and painting at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage.
Her work moves through figurations, abstractions, lines, forms and masses, free experiments guided by childhood marks and affective memories that find an echo in the present. Her research is also guided by studies concerning human nature, particularly the segregations between peoples and individuals that increasingly appear in contemporary times.
She held her first solo exhibition in 2023 at the Instituto Cervantes, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, and since 2020 has participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Centro Cultural dos Correios, Teatro Municipal and Parque das Ruínas in Rio de Janeiro, RJ, and the Memorial da América Latina in São Paulo, SP. In 2024, she participated in the AVA ART Festival in Varkaus, Finland, and Osaka, Japan, and in 2026 she participated in the II Nelson Leirner Salon at Casa da Xiclet, São Paulo, SP.
STATEMENT
My work in the visual arts is related to a professional and mainly personal path in psychoanalysis. A childhood of violence and abuse led me to questions about individual and social differences, and the injustices and segregations that result from them. In both fields I research fantasies, inventions and unique solutions that allow us to endure the anguish of existing.
My painting is produced as a process of experimentation, without a previous project. Transiting through figurations, abstractions, lines, shapes and masses, my free pictorial experiments are driven by childlike marks and affective memories that find an echo in the present.
Handicrafts such as sewing, knitting, crochet appeared from the earliest childhood, as a fabric possible to sustain and elaborate their anguish in the face of life and guided my relationship with the body, the adornments, contours and props that allowed me to constitute an identity and sustain my uniqueness. My reflections on the different ways of loving, from carnal love to unconditional human love, appear in the movement of the bodies and landscapes represented, as well as the certain chaos present in my brushstrokes leads to the very movement of life and the relationships we form to give meaning to existence. From a stroke, a drawing, a sketch I create my scenes. The need to superimpose layers of paint and putty is imperative, as well as the use of colors as an expression of affections. Different techniques, materials and textures combine bringing marks of a gesture that I have built throughout my history.
The interest in the human figure is recurrent: profiles, contours, body parts, headless bodies and disembodied heads express the singularity of psychic life, thoughts and human relationships. A certain degree of indeterminacy, disorder and strangeness is always present in my work, conveying the chaotic dimension of human life, its meaninglessness and, consequently, the infinite possibilities of creation and invention.