VIVIANNE KIRITANI, Brazil/Portugal

The ways of perceiving the world are shaped through the senses, and touch belongs to the largest organ of the human body – the skin. It carries layers of memory and is constantly changing; it is a living tissue in which the “I” is continuously clothed in a new skin. The skin establishes a boundary field between the inner and the outer, between what is inside and what is outside. In this relationship the nature of human connections becomes evident – whether with other beings or with the environment that surrounds them. As an intermediate substance, the skin is the one through which life reveals itself in its transience, ephemerality, organicity and fragility. It also carries within itself its own cycles of death and life, and on its surface preserves the trace of being.

Her work moves through hybrid artistic languages, in a grey area where boundaries soften and dissolve. This interwoven territory reflects her own history, etched into her multi-ethnic body and the ancestral traditions that marked her childhood. Her identity and artistic voice are inherently from her mixed race, the Mestizo. Her practice arises from the invisible – from the subtle folds of time and space, and from the connections arise between people in that delicate “in-between” space, where the hidden and seemingly empty opens into possibility. Her interest is life itself, expressed through the dialogue between bodies and things, through corporeality, and through the latent force that each material carries.