About

I work from the origin: the root, the water, the wet earth after rain, the body that is also nature. I photograph, stitch, cut, shape clay and place myself before the camera because each material tells part of the same enigma — that of life forming and coming undone. Between science, spirituality and emotion, I look for the invisible bonds that tie us to a single universe, where fragility and strength, chaos and order, dance together.

Marcela Neves is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil. She came to art through photography — she trained at Escola Panamericana, studied Art History at MAM-SP and painting at The Art Institute League in New York — and today moves between photography, handmade photographic processes, installation, object, ceramics and self-portraiture.

Her research starts from nature as origin: roots, water, fungi and stone, and the journeys that took her to the Lençóis Maranhenses, the Amazon and the island of Socotra, in Yemen. In series such as Des Cobertas, Diante do Sutil and Petricor, the camera moves in until landscape becomes matter. In the studio that matter takes on a body: photographs stitched together with thread become installations, cyanotypes and earth-toned prints return the image to chemistry and paper, fungi cut from paper spread across the table, small clay forms with white spikes multiply and relief surfaces recall living tissue. In the self-portraits — from EX-SISTERE to the images in which a glass of water distorts her face — her own body enters the work as one more form of nature.

She studied at Das Artes (contemporary art immersion and courses on modern, contemporary, Brazilian, Southern Hemisphere and Eastern artists) and Art History with Fábio Faisal. With Eder Chiodetto she studies photography, repertoire, editing and curating, in individual mentoring and in the Interdisciplinary Study Group. She took Deconditioning the Gaze with Claudio Feijó and an artist residency in São Jerônimo with Alexandre Sequeira.

Solo exhibitions include Des Cobertas (Centro Cultural Palace, Ribeirão Preto, 2022), Des Pertar (IEA-USP, Ribeirão Preto, 2022), Sala da Praça (Ribeirão Preto, 2023) and Diante do Sutil (Rooftopemcasa, São Paulo, 2023). Group exhibitions include the 4th Contemporary Art Exhibition (Casa da Memória Italiana, 2022), SUAVE coisa nenhuma (Adizza Prado Galeria, 2024), where she showed the Petricor series, and Na Trama da Percepção (Rooftopemcasa, São Paulo, 2024). She works with Adizza Prado Galeria.