We are pleased to present poros e acúmulos [pores and accumulations], a solo  exhibition by Carla Santana at the Aquarium, the front space of Carpintaria dedicated to introducing new voices from the circuit. The show brings together a set of new  works that reinforces the artist’s interest in clay and its possibilities. From the mixture of clay with natural pigments extracted from the earth, Santana produces an aqueous mass that she deposits on the paper and works through subtraction and accumulation, creating a surprising morphological vocabulary. 

“My relationship with clay has the dimension of materializing the immaterial. Clay is a mask for purging internal pain, a way to create a narrative about my body”, explains the artist. The paper turns into a skin onto which she creates textures that resemble pores, veins, and viscera, a magnifying glass over bodies – human and animals – dyed in shades of mustard, terracotta, white and black, with specific inputs of blue.

Trained in theater, having worked in the companies Terraço Artes Integradas and Mundé, Carla enters the artistic universe from the stage, reflecting on the narrative dimension of the body. Referencing this formative phase, she unravels the sensory experience and makes the tactile element a primordial part of her practice. At the beginning of her  career, she  deposited clay on her  own body; then she entered the modeling and sculpting process, to arrive at an installative  dimension of the material and then dismantle it to transform it into paint.

The black and white photo-performance that is part of  the exhibition sums up  her  work: a body immersed in clay. “I need an accumulation to subtract and create an image, the photo is also about accumulation, a mountain of clay. From the land we came, to the land we will return”, she concludes.

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Carla Santana (São Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro, 1995). Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Among her exhibitions, the following stand out: Vou ao redor de mim, Centro Cultural Paschoal Carlos Magno (Niterói, Brazil, 2019); Submersiva – Ato 1, Auroras (São Paulo, Brazil, 2021); Crônicas cariocas, MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2021); Engraved into the Body, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (New York, USA, 2021); Engraved into the Body, Carpintaria (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2020) and Sob a Potência da Presença, Museu da República (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2019).