Carolina Cordeiro

Carolina Cordeiro was born in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in 1983. There, she graduated in Drawing from the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Minas Gerais - UFMG, in 2008. She completed, in 2014, her master's degree in Visual Languages at the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, and, in 2021, her doctorate in the Arts department of the School of Communication and Arts at the University of São Paulo - USP, with a research period abroad at Chelsea College of Art and Design, in London. Currently, she lives and works in São Paulo.

Her experience with artistic practice began with drawing, a technique she explored from an early age and studied formally. Today, in her creative process, drawing operates the passage of a project from paper to the world and to the different languages experienced by the artist. In her first individual exhibition, Quase é um lugar que existe (2006), Carolina Cordeiro brings together drawing, photography, and object in a tied dialogue and in a complementary relationship. Since then, her production has shown itself to be increasingly plural in terms of support and increasingly interested in developing itself from the influence and resources that the environment where it takes place can offer.

Since her research is based on immersive processes, Cordeiro defends a relationship of contamination with the landscape. Her work does not, therefore, present simple interventions in space, but also how the space and the elements that constitute it affect the artist and unfold in her work. Uma noite a 550km daqui (2010-2017), an installation with felt and burrs, well demonstrates this approach. Its title refers to the distance between Ateliê Fidalga, one of the places where the work was exhibited, and a town in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the artist collected the seeds of Xanthium cavanillesii, popularly known as "carrapichos". With these seeds, which have the power to disperse by clinging to animals' hair, she created a starry sky by attaching them to dark blue felt. The title of the work marks, at the same time, the distance and the connection it operates between two spaces, and may vary according to the place where it is assembled, always having as reference its origin – a city in Minas Gerais.

Titles, by the way, are of great importance in Carolina Cordeiro's work. Her interest in poetry and Brazilian popular music would account for this. América do Sal (2021) and As impurezas do branco (2019), for example, make reference to two renowned Brazilian poets, respectively, Oswald de Andrade and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. The relationship with the popular songbook influences even the choice of materials, as occurs with zinc in the works Untitled (2019), which consists of zinc plates cut like playing cards with which castles are made, and Dizem que há um silêncio todo negro (2019), an installation made with a perforated zinc plate that plays with both the passage of light and the imagery of violence.

The cohesive aspect of Cordeiro's research shows itself in the interpenetration of the themes and materials explored in her works, and in how one project does not imply the abandonment of the other, but extends into the other. Between the work made with the baking sheets (Untitled), from 2009, which is still being assembled, and Paisagem, from 2019, one can establish several connections, such as economy of language, geometric interest, and a large symbolic background – such as domestic life or the red earth of her hometown.

In 2021, Carolina Cordeiro founded, along with artists Bruno Baptistelli, Frederico Filippi, and Maíra Dietrich, the gallery Galeria de Artistas, a project created by and for artists as a means to explore new ways of participating in the art market. In 2020, she was nominated for the PIPA award. The artist has attended several national and international artist residencies, among them: CASCO: Art and Community Integration Program, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 2020; Pivô Arte e Pesquisa, São Paulo, Brazil, 2019; Red Bull Station, São Paulo, Brazil, 2016; Homesession, Barcelona, Spain, 2011; GlogauAIR Art Residency Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2009.

Among her exhibitions, the following solo shows stand out: América do Sal, Artists Gallery - GDA, São Paulo, 2021; Dizem que há um silêncio todo negro, Auroras, São Paulo, 2019; Una nit a 8360 km d'aquí, Àngels Barcelona, Spain, 2018; Carolina Cordeiro, Ciclón, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 2018; Entre, Memorial Minas Gerais Vale, Belo Horizonte, 2013; Carolina Cordeiro, Homesession, Barcelona, Spain, 2011. And the group shows: Semana sim, semana não, Casa Zalszupin, São Paulo, 2022; Lenta explosión de una semilla, OTR. Espacio de arte, Madrid, Spain, 2020; I remember earth, Le Magasin des horizons, Grenoble, France, 2019; Estratégias do Feminino, Farol Santander, Porto Alegre, 2019; Agora somos mais de mil, Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, 2016; Blind Field, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois, USA, 2013.