Thaís
January 2004
70 x 60 cms
Oil on iron plate
This portrait was created right after my graduation from FAAP. At the time, I shared a studio with Marcela Tiboni, Thaís Albuquerque and Amanda Mei, among other artists. Thaís was making objects at the time, juxtaposing, gluing, stapling and melting an assortment of apparently unrelated things to create new (and often disturbing) meanings. She used a lot of discarded objects, often corroded by time, resulting in works with a look that was reminiscent of the grunge aesthetic, made popular in the 90s. This predilection for worn-out things caused me to start referring to her work as an "Aesthetic of Decay", a name I never told her. At that time, I remembered the portrait I did of Marcela and decided to make one of Thaís as well, since he was the person I spent most of my time with at the studio. Following the process I was using to create the other portraits, I looked for a link between the surface and the paint, which could also be linked to her and her work. And soon enough, I came to the idea of making her portrait in an iron plate. Naturally immiscible in water, the oil would protect the painted areas, while the rest of the surface was left outside to rust, approaching the style of objects that Thaís was creating. Years later, when I decided to leave the advertising agencies and carry on with my career in the arts, I learned that Thaís had gone the other way, leaving an art career that was beginning to get noticed, to take part in a career in advertising studios.
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