![Panmela Castro, Consagrada IV [Consecrated IV], da série Escarificações [Scarifications series], 2021](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_1600,h_1600,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/artlogicstorage/panmelacastro/images/view/0a708c4bd39801a21a9ed0ddf0463132j/panmelacastro-panmela-castro-consagrada-iv-consecrated-iv-da-s-rie-escarifica-es-scarifications-series-2021.jpg)
Consagrada IV [Consecrated IV], da série Escarificações [Scarifications series], 2021
In the photoperformance Consagrada, the artist shows her chest marked by a scarification, symbolizing the path she took to acceptance in the Brazilian art market. The practice of scarification, which Panmela began to explore after a visit to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2016, has become a fundamental tool in her artistic research. On that occasion, contact with the work of Catherine Opie, one of her main references, acted as a trigger for the use of this technique, allowing the artist to reflect on forms of transgression and resistance.
The work marked the artist's debut at Galeria Luisa Strina and offers an incisive critique of how the art market selects its protagonists, revealing the difficult trajectories necessary to achieve legitimacy. In a field where approval can become a painful rite, the act of tearing one's skin becomes a physical metaphor for what it means to be shaped by expectations and standards. Thus, this work moves between the new and the ancestral, questioning the boundaries between tradition and contemporaneity, and at what cost “consecration” takes place.
Exhibitions
"Ideias Radicais Sobre o Amor"Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro
De agosto à novembro de 2024.