Mano Penalva

(Bahía, BR – 1987)

Mano Penalva’s process involves his interest in Anthropology and Material Culture, which occurs in this urgency to appropriate common articles found and purchased on the street, popular markets and domestic spaces. Thus, one can recognize a breakdown of frontiers into a globalized language proposed by the meeting of the materials used in the works, either in the appropriation of a national family iconography, or in the juxtaposition of it to other iconographies in different parts of the world. Often subvert the values and meanings and stitching social and philosophical discourses that are evidenced by the forms of created objects.

As an artist he explores the poetry obtained by the displacement of materials and objects from his everyday context, working with different media such as painting, video, photography, sculpture and installation. His work brings reflections on the character of objects, how they transit the world, exchange relationships and trade agreements between countries. They acquire different layers of meanings when used by different cultures, impacting on the formation of the customs of a society. Mano emphasizes with his works the idea that the exponential proliferation of objects and images are not intended to train perception or consciousness, but insist on merging with them.