Multidisciplinary artist Marina Esmeraldo works across disciplines and materials with the aim to represent consciousness shaped by inner perception and make what she calls “the architecture of emotional places.”
Originally from Fortaleza, Brazil, she’s now based between Barcelona and London, combining her artistic projects and research for exhibitions and installations with commissioned pieces for select brands. Her work – colorful and graphic – draws on her tropical upbringing, as well as her modernist training in architecture and her innate wanderlust.
“I think it’s very hard not to be influenced by your surroundings when you grow up,” Esmeraldo observed in an interview with GCN Magazine. “And in Brazil, we have such a rich, folkloric culture. This all came out in my work quite late because I trained in architecture and when I was an architecture student, I really was obsessed with minimalism. And clean white shapes. Then when I started to work with illustration, a lot of color and pattern and craziness came out and I just kind of rolled with it, let it come through.”
According to Esmeraldo, as time went by she found that the architectural training “took over” and more and more, she worked in geometry and geometric abstract compositions – compositions which she acknowledges are architectural in nature. “But I still can’t, I’ve even tried to get away but I can’t really get away from the need to use color and vibrancy and it’s kind of stronger than me,” she adds. “I think there’s a vibrant quality of where I’m from that finds its way into my work and now I’ve been working long enough to witness it sometimes it takes different shapes or different mediums or different ways, but it is.”
Her work tends to explore the tension between alienation and belonging through traveling – a product of her moving between continents and cultures since childhood. Exhibited around the world, including in the Venice Biennale, you can also see some of her work online, via Instagram.
