“Screens Series: Aline Motta” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists.
Aline Motta, (Other) Foundations, 2017–19 (still). Video, color, sound; 15:48 min. Courtesy the artist
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With her artistic practice, Aline Motta (b. 1974, Niterói, Brazil) seeks to point out and fill in the gaps in her own family history as a result of colonial erasure. Her videos, photographs, installations, and performances are based on speculative studies that mix archival research, field trips, and oral history reports, to access, nourish, and reveal parts of the past that were previously thought to be lost.
Refusing the linear organization of time and understanding the past instead as part of the present, Motta creates works that reorient memories and construct new narratives. Reflecting on notions of diaspora, belonging, and identification, she reconfigures Afro-Atlantic relations in her own ways, positioning herself as the author of her own history. Blurring the boundaries between what is known and what is imagined, Motta’s works demonstrate how envisioning new pasts can free us from old narratives, and manifest new futures.
“Screens Series: Aline Motta” is curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, ISLAA Curatorial Fellow.
Aline Motta (b. 1974, Niterói, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions include “Aline Motta: Memory, Journey, and Water,” Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020); “Bridges over the Abyss,” SESC Santana, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2019); and “Natural Daughter,” Centro Cultural São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2018). Her works have been shown in exhibitions and screenings including the Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2020); the Berlinale – Berlin International Film Festival, Germany (2020); Kugoma Forum Cinema, Maputo, Mozambique; “Afro-Atlantic Histories,” MASP / Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2018); and the Iwaya Community Art Festival, Lagos, Nigeria (2017). Recently, she has earned the ZUM Photography Scholarship of Instituto Moreira Salles (2018) and the Marcantonio Vilaça Award for the Arts (2019).
Aline Motta, (Other) Foundations, 2017–19
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