Mariana Paku

Visual Artist

Feed

Artist CV

Born in São Paulo, Brazil
Currently based in Milan, Italy My interests are centered around memory and loss, using my family's archive as one of my primary sources for developing my work.

I strongly believe that scavenging through photographs and forgotten objects has the ability to stretch time and open spaces for narratives to be revisited, retold, and reinvented; it also instigates clues and answers to be found. Departing from this archeological gesture, I begin to create alternative narratives: from turning my grandmother into a saint to grieving the death of a father who is still alive. As a tool, the archive frees me from adhering to a real or chronological sequence and invites me to travel across time and memory – both of myself and others.

My primary mediums have always been words and photography, often manifested in artist books. Most recently, I have been turning my attention and dedicating my time to asemic writing and drawing.

01

Breadcrumbs



2022 – 2025
Artist book, 21 x 29.7 cm
Maps (4), 100 x 70 cm “If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Breadcrumbs is an investigation of my artistic research through the methodical exercise of reading, erasing, and translating excerpts from my writing practice. This process, which often resembled a punitive task given to a child, led to a cathartic sense of release, later explored theoretically in the second part of this project: a discussion on language, asemic writing, erasure art, and the politics of making the personal something public. From the crumbs (clues) found, four maps took form; they act as open-ended paths into my processes, often being photographs of the context I have operated in the recent past.



02

Antonia



2022 – 2025
Photographic series (42 x 30 cm each)
Mineral ink printing
 This work entails translating a study of sculptures based on the recollection of my grandmother’s fingers into a photographic series. The manipulation process of the images led to the creation of different celestial bodies – something that, even if already dead, can still hold memories of other times and carry spiritual value, often guiding those who are lost.



03

Three Little Screams, Three Litlle Jumps

(Três Pulinhos, Três Gritinhos)

2023
Book covered with silk scarf 50 pages
14 x 21 cm

Book in portuguese
English translation
Among the various rituals my grandmother used to convey around the house, the most frequent was "São Longuinho." The Christian saint is a popular figure in the Brazilian cultural context: when you lose something,  São Longuinho comes to your aid if you turn a glass upside down in a higher spot – so it won't be accidentally unturned by someone else. When the object is recovered, you must turn the glass upright and gift São Longuinho three little screams and three little jumps. More than revisiting this superstition and memory, this work alludes to a constant longing for life without my grandmother's presence.

04

Mother Tongue

(Língua Materna)

       
2024
Watercolor and ink on cotton paper, starter, water,  sugar,  recipe, wood altar
81 x 70 x 15 cm

Exhibition Website The work consists of one large drawing that, from a distance, might be perceived as abstractions. From a closer approach, the watercolor broadens the lines into creature-like things and small ecosystems; it's hard to tell whether these are living things or far beyond dead. They might even be decomposing beings—leftovers from a different time. Alongside it—on its altar—there is a folded piece of paper and the once-living starter on top.


05

There is an absurd amount of past
in the tiniest drop of water



2023
Color print on vellum paper
21 x 29.7 cm

This project is a souvenir from the southern hemisphere, where end-of-the-year holidays can be lived among water: the sea, the pool, the waterfall. Christmas is not white nor cold, and New Year is an intense (and extensive) rite of passage. Moving to the northern part of the globe prompted me to want to box all the water and share the invite. The printed box outline on the vellum paper should be cut and glued to create a translucent box.


06

May Your Ego Rest This Summer



2023
15 black and white photographs
154 x 154 cm
These photographs are an outcome of a visual study regarding recent climate catastrophes. The landscapes emerged from photographs (screenshots) of floods around Brazil and Italy, both from personal archive material. This imagery constructs nature-like textures and scenes only possible from human action and inaction. If these are the landscapes accessible to us inhabiting urban spaces, what will remain to be contemplated?

07

Dirt; Water

(Terra; Água)

        
2018
Performance, broken bricks, dictionary,  pumpkin seeds
Various dimensions



This project began with the discomfort aroused in the 2018 Brazilian elections: it rapidly unveiled the actual values and prejudiced opinions of people close to me and pushed me to redefine what was/is to be Brazilian from a biographical perspective. The results of the performance are a graveyard of broken bricks, most of which only carry fragments of the words imprinted, and a dictionary. The book comes buried in a box filled with seeds and brings alternative interpretations for the 64 words used in the two different stages of this project: dirt and water. Some of the words included are: abbreviate, hate, escape, suspension, property, moral – for the bricks – and flesh, soul, mouth, chew, risk, digestion, and itch (for the seeds).