Catarina Coelho
MFA ’13 Fine Arts 2D
In my work I explore the subject of landscape as a testimonial site of human interaction with a territory. Although I primarily work within the permutations between drawing and the expanded field of print, my practice also includes painting and writing.
Cartographic spaces, borders, and the problem of the division of the page recur in my work as forms that seek to point out to broader historical narratives — as in the works Book of Borders, There Is Struggle on Both Sides of the Line, Universum, and in the most recent artist’s book, The Language of Shadows: Visual Correspondence. Here, space and landscape become an extension of the self, body, a synonym of the world.
Through drawing and print, I am drawn to strange natural lands, and seek to further merge together states and qualities of the natural elements: the physicality of the land, the fluidity of the water, the volatility of the atmosphere. It is as if I set out to chase the moments which occur in the ever-altering states in the landscape. I work between impression and expression, and I am interested in searching for profound links between great physical forces and human life. However, I often wonder if my work is instead an expression of the gap between the two.
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